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COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 



INTRODUCTION 



TO 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 



THOMAS GARY JOHNSON, 

Author of " The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney ;'''' " The Life and 

Letters of Benjamin Morgan Pahner ;'''' '•'•John Calvin and the Genevan 

Reformation ;'''' " The Presbyterian Church in the United States ;''^ 

" Virginia Presbyterianisni and Religious Liberty.''^ 



THE SECOND EDITION, 



For Sale by the 

PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION, 

Richmond, Va. Texarkana, Ark.-Texas. 



0^^ 






^ '.^s' 



Copyright, 1909, 
Second Edition Copyrighted 1910. 

BY 

THOS'. C JOHNSON 



Printed by 

Whittet & Shepperson, 

Richmond, Va. 



(gCU250V'3B 



f 



I 



THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO 
MY WIFE, 
WHOSE HELPFUL SYMPATHY DESERVES 
A BETTER TRIBUTE. 



PREFATORY NOTE 



For years the author had been conducting a brief 
study of Christian missions, using such text-books as had 
been available. He had given lectures supplementary to 
the text-books he at the time was using. His lectures had 
grown in volume, till he found little time for interlocutory 
study with the class after delivering them. These lec- 
tures had all along been informed by a unifying principle 
— the relation of the mental grasp of the Christian system 
to mission work. He had been asked repeatedly to publish 
them. Two years ago he began to rewrite those bearing 
on world-wide missions, as opportunity was given; and 
now offers these to the Christian public, and particularly 
to the ministers, elders, deacons and brotherhood-workers 
of his own communion. 

It will be found that they constitute an attempt at a 
philosophy of missions ; and, it is hoped, that they contain 
a relatively small amount of unessential detail. It has 
been a constant aim, at any rate, to burden the memory 
only with the essential facts; but to stir the thought. In 
a word, the aim has been to introduce to the proper study 
of missions. 

T. C. J. 
Union Theological Seminary, 

Richmond, Va. ■ 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 



God's Ordained Missionary Society; its Members; Their 
Obligations as Such; and the Imperative and Exclusive 
Nature of Those Obligations 9 

LECTURE n. 

The New Testament Principle to Regulate the Church's 

Missionary Effort; and Certain Corollaries Therefrom.. 30 

LECTURE in. 

Paul's Sense of His Obligation to Missions and the Way in 
Which He Responded to It 53 

LECTURE IV. 

Patristic Missions: Or Christian Missions from 100 to 590; 

and Nestorian Missions 70 

LECTURE V. 

Mediaeval Missions, 590 to 1517. Raymund Lull 90 

LECTURE VI. 

Erasmus' Missionary Ideals. Roman Catholic Missions, 1517 
to the Present 106 

LECTURE VII. 

The Attitude of the Protestant and Reformed Churches 
Toward Missions, 1517 to 1781 128 



8 CONTENTS. 

LECTURE VIII. 

The Age of Voluntary Protestant Missionary Societies, 1781 
to 1829 154 

LECTURE IX. 

The Church Becoming Conscious of Itself as a Missionary 
Society, 1829 to the Present 171 

LECTURE X. 

Some Motives to Missionary Endeavor 194 



INTRODUCTION TO 

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



LECTURE I. 

God's Ordained Missionary Society; Its Members; 
Their Obligations as Such ; and the Im- 
perative AND Exclusive Nature of Those 
Obligations. 

In the treatment of this subject, our first contention 
shall be that, in ordaining the constitution of the Chutrch,*^" 
God made it a missionary society ; our second, that every 
member of the Church, in virtue of his Church member- 
ship, is a member of this missionary society and stands 
pledged to do his utmost as such; and our third, that 
the obligation to fulfill this pledge is imperative 'and 
exclusive. 

These contentions are as old as the Bible. They have 
been coming more and more fully into the consciousness 
of choice spirits of the Church during the last four-score 
years; but they have not yet attained the recognition 
which their importance and the large place given them 
in Holy Writ demand. 

Time would fail us to cite the many scriptures which, 
directly or indirectly, support one, or other, of the con- 



r f 



ro Introduction to Christian Missions 

tentions. Accordingly, we shall endeavor to cite only- 
some of the more typical passages, on which they may 
be rested severally. 

Our first contention is' that Gody in ordaining the 
Churchy made it a missionary society. 

In support of this, we point, in the first place, to the 
Ahrahamic covenant, which was of world-wide mission- 
ary import. 

In the original form of this covenant, God said to 
the "father of the faithful," "and in thee shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xii. 3). In a 
subsequent form God said, "For a father of many nations 
have I made thee" (Gen. xvii. 5). This' promise, Paul 
teaches us, was made good to Abraham in his becoming 
the father of all them that believe, whether they be cir- 
cumcised or not; that is, in his becoming father to both 
Jews and Gentiles, so far as they should believe (Rom. 
iv. II, 12), on the Lord Jesus Christ. 

According, therefore, to the terms' of the Abrahamic 
covenant, the Church of God was missionary, as estab- 
lished in the family of the father of the faithful. The 
Church covenant, made with Abraham and his seed after 
him (Gen. xvii. 7, 8), looked to Abraham's becoming 
"the father of many nations." It looked to all earth's 
families being "blessed in him." 

But the Abrahamic covenant, on the basis* of which 
the Church was established in the family of the Patriarch, 
remains the fundamental Church covenant in every sub- 
sequent time. According to the teaching of Paul in the 
third chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, it was not 
annulled on the introduction of the Mosaic dispensation ; 
nor on the passing away of that dispensation; but re- 
mains in force under the Christian dispensation (Gal. 



God's Ordained Missionary Society ii 

iii. 17). Hence Paul also taught that the Church was 
one and the same under both the Mosaic and the Chris- 
tian dispensations. He taught that the old good olive 
tree had been the same throughout the ages'. In his day- 
branches from the wild olive tree were being grafted into 
the good olive tree (Rom. xi. 17, ff.), The Church of 
the New Testament was no new Church. It was the 
old olive tree with some new limbs inserted. 

Now, the Abrahamic covenant being fundamentally 
missionary and that covenant remaining the basal Church 
covenant under the new dispensation, the New Testa- 
ment Church must be conceived to have the same mis- 
sionary character as the Abrahamic. The primal cove- 
nant on which the Church was founded and on which 
it has stood to this day, is of world-wide missionary 
import. The Church of the Christian dispensation, 
informed as it is' by the principles of the Abrahamic 
covenant, must be regarded as ordained a missionary 
society, of God; and it must be clear that he has never 
looked upon it as destined to carry the Gospel to any 
one people, or to any group of peoples, merely; in this 
original covenant, God showed that he intended his re- 
ligion for all peoples' and for every individual of them, 
who should accept it. The Church of our dispensation, 
then, is a missionary society by the ordination of God, 
as revealed in the Abrahamic covenant. 

In support of the contention that in ordaining the 
constitution of the Church, God made it a missionary 
society, we point, in the second place, to the missionary 
feature of even the particularistic and separatist Mosaic 
dispensation. 

The Church of the Mosaic dispensation is spoken of, 
often, and regarded, as non-missionary; and, it is readily 



12 Introduction to Christian Missions 

conceded that active and wide-spread propagandist ef- 
fort was neither a constant nor the most conspicuous 
characteristic of the Ufe of the Mosaic Church. The 
pecuHar, preparatory work assigned the Church under 
that regime, was_, perhaps, incompatible with large mis- 
sionary work in the field ; but we may easily overrate the 
non-missionary aspect of the dispensation. It really had 
a missionary feature^ as the following facts show: 

Fact One. — The Mosaic legislation prepared for the 
work of making proselytes' and encouraged it. See 
Exodus xii. 48; Numbers ix. 14; xv. 15. The latter 
passages read: "And if a stranger shall sojourn among 
you, and will keep the passover unto the Lord, accord- 
ing to the ordinance of the passover, and according to 
the manner thereof, so shall he do : ye shall have one or- 
dinance both for the stranger, and for him that was born 
in the land." "One ordinance shall be both for you of the 
congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth 
with you, an ordinance forever in your generations; As 
ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One 
law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger 
that sojourneth with you." 

Thus did the Mosaic law prepare for and encourage 
proselyting — an enterprise of a missionary character. 

Fact Two. — That the Church of the Mosaic dispensa- 
tion had a missionary feature is indicated by the Episode 
of Jonah. The mission of Jonah to the people of Nine- 
veh, in its purpose, was generically like the missionary 
work of the Church of other ages'. The object of Jonah's 
mission was the glory of God in the salvation of men. 
Nor is there any reason for supposing that the salvation 
desired was only temporal. 

This story of Jonah is a true episode in the Mosaic 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 13 

economy. While more distinctly missionary than the 
history as a whole, it is not at all unnatural in its place. 
On the contrary, it comes in naturally and so points to 
the missionary character of the whole economy, while 
standing in contrast with the rest as especially missionary. 

Fact Three. — The prophets and Psalmists of the 
Mosaic dispensation are found holding aloft the mission- 
ary ideal of the Church. 

This appears in the prophecies of the Messiah and 
his kingdom, e. g., it appears in the second, forty-fifth, 
seventy-second, and one hundred and tenth Psalms, in 
the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, and in other 
prophecies ; it appears also in prophetic prayers like that 
of Solomon (i Kings viii. 41, ff.) : the second Psalm 
grounds the prevalence of the kingdom in the Divine de- 
cree and in the heirship of the Son to the whole earth. 
The forty-fifth Psalm celebrates in triumphant strain the 
introduction of the heathen into the kingdom of God. 
The seventy-second Psalm prays for the coming of a 
greater King than Solomon, for the coming of the Prince 
of Peace, the righteous Defender of the Poor and the 
King to whom all kings and people shall do homage. It 
predicts of Him the blessing promised the father of the 
faithful in the Abrahamic covenant, "Men shall be 
blessed in him, and all men shall call Him blessed," and 
concludes with a doxology of vast evangelical richness, 
"Blessed be His glorious name forever and ever: and 
let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and 
Amen." The one hundred and tenth Psalm predicts the 
final subjugation of the heathen by the King Christ, 
ascribing, in the most solemn manner to him the con- 
junction of eternal priesthood. The missionary import 
of the latter portion of Isaiah has inspired scores and. 



14 Introduction TO Christian Missions 

perhaps, thousands of missionaries. WilHam Carey, in 
the years when he had no convert, stayed himself on 
Isa. li. 2, "Look unto Abraham, your father, and unto 
Sarah that bare you : For I called him and blessed him, 
and increased him." In Isa. ii. 2, we read, "And it shall 
come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the 
Lord's house shall be established in the top of the moun- 
tains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all the 
nations shall flow into it." In Micah iv. i, 2, "But in the 
last days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the 
house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the 
mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills and 
people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come 
and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, 
and to the house of the God of Jacob : and he will teach 
us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the 
law shall go forth of Zion and the word of the Lord from 
Jerusalem." In Zechariah, viii. 22-23, "Yea, many people 
and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of Hosts 
in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith 
the Lord of Hosts. In those days it shall come to pass 
that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the 
nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is 
a Jew, saying, We will go with you ; for we have heard 
that God is with you." It was the manner of the prophets 
to speak in terms of the past and present when portray- 
ing the future. Hence in setting forth the enlargement 
of the Church they suggest to the superficial the continu- 
ance and growth of the Mosaic economy. But to a pro- 
founder insight these predictions involve the doing away 
of that economy with its burdensome and hobbling cere- 
monial and the growth of the institution on which it had 
been superimposed. The seer Daniel saw that the God 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 15 

of Heaven would set up a kingdom which should never 
be destroyed, and which should not be left to other people, 
but should break in pieces and consume all the other 
kingdoms and stand forever; for as much as Nebuchad- 
nezzar had seen a stone cut without hands from the 
mountains, breaking in pieces all'that opposed, and grow- 
ing into a great mountain and filling ''the whole earth." 
The wise man prayed "Hear Thou in Heaven Thy dwell- 
ing place and do according to all that the stranger calleth 
to Thee for; that all peoples of the earth may know 
Thy name to fear Thee." Jehovah answered, 'T have 
heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou hast 
made before me" (i Kings viii. 41, f¥.). In teaching that 
the Church shall share her truth with all the families of 
the earth; that she is to become universal, they proclaim 
her essentially missionary character. For how shall the 
peoples hear without a preacher and how shall they have 
a preacher except he be sent? 

Fact Four. — The history of the Church in the Mosaic 
form shows that it had a missionary feature. 

In the days of David and Solomon the kingdom was 
enlarged by the extension of the theocratic rule to cer- 
tain heathen nations ; so that the prophet Amos, looking 
from his later standing point to one future to himself 
could say, as the Lord's mouthpiece, "In that day, will 
I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and 
close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his 
ruins ; and I will build it as in the days of old : That they 
may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, 
which are called by thy name" (Amos ix. 11, 12). The 
later history of Israel saw nations brought into the theo- 
cracy, and in accord with the Divine will, which earlier 
had been excluded therefrom (Deuteronomy xxiii. 4)'. 



i6 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Not only so, history shows that women, Rahab and Ruth, 
originally heathen, were placed by Him who controUeth 
all events in the covenant line of whom Christ came; as if 
to mark its everlasting universality as well as temporary 
particularism. 

That the history of the Church in the Mosaic form 
shows that it had a missionary character finds forceful 
illustrative proof in the Synagogues of the Dispersion, 
previous to the coming of Christ. These were so many 
mission centers in effect. They had gathered about them 
many devout souls who waited for the kingdom of God. 
They had preached and thrilled to their depths these 
nobler heathen, with their lofty, monotheistic doctrine of 
God; had taught them that God is one, all-wise and 
powerful, the creator, the upholder, the governor, of 
all things, — an infinite spirit, just and loving, merciful 
and gracious. They had set forth the doctrine of a 
future estate of rewards and punishments, — the happi- 
ness of the true servants of God and the misery of those 
who should continue to walk in the ways of the wicked. 
They had inculcated the propriety and the obligation of 
being humble and penitent in heart, pure, true and faith- 
ful in life. 

Not a few of the Jews of the Dispersion seem to 
have been moved with great zeal in their missionary 
efforts. To win converts, they employed all forms of 
literary endeavor. They translated their Scriptures. 
They wrote commentaries on the Scriptures. They pro- 
duced philosophical works in which they tried to trace 
the great classic systems of philosophy to the teachings 
of Moses as their ultimate source. They exhibited and 
exulted in their history as showing the hand of God. 
They boasted of the venerable age of their nation and 
of its faith. 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 17 

While some of the methods of the missionaries of the 
Dispersion were wrong, the teaching proper to the Syna- 
gogue had, and was' designed to have, a vast influence on 
the heathen. It was God's way of bringing His truth 
to the knowledge of vast numbers of His elect among 
the nations. The synagogue system amongst the Disper- 
sion was in practical effect a missionary system to the 
peoples amongst whom the dispersed Jews sojourned; 
and they were found in considerable numbers, widely 
scattered throughout the empire. 

Nevertheless, the Church, in the Mosaic dispensation, 
was in the chrysalis or pupa state, — in an immature 
stage of development; and to it was assigned a peculiar 
task which in that age was incompatible with universal 
active missionary enterprise. In an age of almost uni- 
versal polytheism and pantheism, of heathenism rampant, 
it was a task of Israel to be monotheistic, — to hold the 
doctrine of monotheism aloft ; a task to which Israel was 
competent only after years of training in a land at once 
isolated fram idolatrous peoples, and a highway of the 
nations through whom God chastised his people when, 
in spite of their isolation, they fell into idolatry. 

That Israel might receive, hold, and teach monothe- 
ism, God kept her largely to herself; forbade her 
mingling freely with other nations. In like manner, that 
she might receive, hold and teach "a true ethical ideal, 
such as is embodied in the Decalogue"; and that she 
might set forth the need of redemption and the coming 
of the Redeemer,^ he kept her largely to herself. The 
Church, like the individual missionary, must first be filled 
with, and established in, the truth before it can do much 
in the actual work of missions. 

We do not claim that the Church of the Mosaic dis- 



i8 Introduction to Christian Missions 

pensation was largely occupied with distinctly mission- 
ary labors. What we do claim is that the one Church 
of all the ages, during that stage of its history, was in 
training for missionary work, even as our students for 
the ministry now are; and put forth effort enough of a 
missionary sort to show a missionary heart at bottom. 

But if we may argue with confidence that in the 
Church we have a missionary society ordained of God, 
from the unannulled missionary charter of the Abrahamic 
Church, a charter which underlies the Christian Church 
as well as the Abrahamic; if we can see that the Church 
of the Mosaic dispensation, restrictive though it was, was 
at bottom missionary, and looked to universal mission- 
ary work once its trammels were removed ; if we can see 
that it did much missionary work, especially through its 
synagogues, in preparation for the effort of the Apostolic 
age; it becomes still more evident that the Abrahamic 
Church in its Christian, or New Testament, form is a 
missionary society ordained of God when we turn to 
the New Testament. This brings us to the strongest 
proof that God ordained the Church a missionary society 

In support of this contention we pointy m the third 
place, accordingly, to the fact that New Testament teach- 
ing clearly makes the church of this dispensation a mis- 
sionary society by Divine appointment. 

The mass of New Testament matter available in 
the support of this position is so vast as to embarrass him 
who would make an adequate presentation of it. Noth- 
ing more is attempted in this lecture than to present 
certain typical portions of the pertinent matter. 

One such portion is the ever-recurring representa- 
tion that the Gospel is for the whole world. This is dis- 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 19 

tinctly taught over and over again: "For God so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten Son that who- 
soever believeth in him should not perish but have ever- 
lasting life." 'The Son of man must be lifted up, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting Hfe. For God sent not his Son into the world 
to condemn the world; but that the zvorld through Him 
might be saved." "And the Spirit and the bride say, 
Come. And he that heareth let him say, Come. And 
he that is athirst, let him come : he that will, let him take 
of the water of Hfe freely." 

There is a wideness' in the Gospel like the wideness 
of the sea. In a sense that the Mosaic Church could 
not be, the Christian Church is, for the whole world. 
Christ contemplates and teaches in the Gospel of a Church 
co-extensive with the earth in geographical limits and 
with time in duration ; and this' conception of the Gospel 
and of the Church visible is not only the prevalent but 
the universal conception amongst New Testament writers. 
This Divine representation of the Gospel as for all car- 
ries with it the implication of an obligation on those who 
have it to impart it to those who have it not. 

But not only does the New Testament teach that the 
Gospel is for all nations. Our Lord Jesus Christ re- 
peatedly laid the duty upon the Church of giving the 
Gospel to all peoples. In particular, he delivered a great 
charge, perfecting the constitution of the Church and, 
in the same breath, making it thenceforth the constitu- 
tion of an active and working missionary society. This 
charge he repeated in substance more than once. As re- 
corded in Matt, xxviii. 18-20, it reads, "And Jesus came 
and spake unto them, saying. All power is given unto 
me in heaven and in earth. Go ye and teach all nations, 



20 Introduction to Christian Missions 

baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things 
whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with 
you always, to the end of the world." 

This' charge may be considered as a republication of 
the Abrahamic covenant with an improvement, — a change 
in the form of the seal of the covenant, viz. : the substi- 
tution of baptism for circumcision. But this by the way. 
Our present concern is' with the fact that this charge 
expressly enjoins the duty of being missionary on the 
body ecclesiastic. Let no one belonging to the Church 
of that day or any day since to the present, attempt to 
excuse the Church or himself from the burden of this 
command. The command was to the body in covenant, 
and all its' members are under obligations to obey the 
charge. 

The charge was not designed merely for the indi- 
viduals to whom it was first addressed. Christ could 
not have asked the physically impossible. It was impos- 
sible for the Apostles alone, or for the little band of 
disciples then on earth to have made disciples of all 
nations in the manner commanded, — a physical impossi- 
bility. The commentator and historian, Hanna, well says, 
"When Jesus said, 'Go ye and make disciples of all na- 
tions,' he announced, in the simplest and least ostenta- 
tious way, the most original, the broadest, the sublimest 
enterprise that ever human beings' were called upon to 
accomplish." He did not ask it of the ApostoHc body; 
he did not ask it of the few feeble disciples then on earth. 
He asked it of the Church in which the Apostles exer- 
cised their ofifices and of which the disciples were mem- 
bers. This appears still more clearly when we remark 
that our Lord regards, in this charge, the enterprise of 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 21 

missions as lasting to the end of time. He says', "And, 
lo, I am with you always, as you engage in this effort, 
even unto the consummation of the age," or of this world- 
period. The mission enterprise was to be only fairly 
begun when the Apostles and their contemporaries had 
seen their last earthly service. Yet as they represented 
the Church which was to endure throughout the ages, 
Christ spoke to them with propriety of his' going to be 
with them throughout the ages in the enterprise of mis- 
sions. He was going to be with the Church of which 
they were the present representatives to the end of this 
world age. 

But, my brethren, that the Church of God of the 
Christian dispensation is a missionary society ordained 
of God is made clear not only by New Testament repre- 
sentations of the universality of the Gospel and by the 
great commission given by our Lord to his Church, the 
body in covenant with him and to which he granted the 
seal of Baptism ; but by the history recorded in the Acts' 
of the Apostles. That history makes it clear that the 
Holy Spirit was careful to make and to keep the Apos- 
tolic Church a missionary Church. Christ told propheti- 
cally the history of this Church in the memorable words 
announced to the disciples who witnessed the ascension, 
*'Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you ; and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusa- 
lem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth." He foretold in these 
pregnant words the gist of Apostolic history. The 
Gospel began to be preached in Jerusalem, and in all 
Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of 
the earth. The Church was missionary; all missionary 
in spirit; as appears from the record in Acts viii. 1-4. We 



22 Introduction to Christian Missions 

there read that, after the stoning of Stephen, when the 
disciples were scattered abroad throughout the regions 
of Judea and Samaria, except the Apostles', 'They that 
were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the 
word." Disciples, taken in after the ascension, under 
the tuition of the Holy Ghost, felt the burden and the 
privilege of the great commission to the Church of which 
they were a part. Some preached Christ in a formal 
way; some in an informal way only, some talked and 
lived Christ merely. The Spirit moved the whole Church 
to be missionary as every member could. He moved 
certain men in a special way to their work. He said, 
"Separate me, Barnabas and Saul to the work whereto 
I have called them." Through them the Church at large 
labored in extraordinary wise in missions. Paul and 
Barnabas recognized this and made reports of their labors 
to the Church whence they were sent out. But not only 
through these great leaders did the Holy Ghost move the 
Church to mission efforts, as has appeared. These pre- 
eminent missionaries found fields prepared by obscure 
Christians, under the leading of the Holy Ghost, for their 
reaping. 

Church history in the Apostolic age, under the in- 
spiring impulses of the Holy Ghost, is mostly a history 
of missions'. What is New Testament literature, once 
you have passed the Gospels, but the literature of Apos- 
tolic missions? Three-fourths, and more, of the Books 
of Acts is taken up with the history of the grand march 
of Apostolic missions. Paul's Epistles are letters to mis- 
sionary churches and missionary workers, and deal with 
the problems arising on the various missionary fields. 
Large portions of remaining books are missionary. The 
Apocalypse is', in part, addressed to missionary churches. 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 23 

in part, deals philosophically with the great contest be- 
tween the Church as missionary and the hostile power 
of the world arrayed against it. 

The New Testament Church had to be missionary or 
die. It had to live by missionary enterprise, as the 
Churches in our foreign mission fields to-day. And thus 
by environment, as well as by the inspiration of the Holy 
Ghost, by Providence as well as by teaching and inner 
direction, God made the Apostolic Church missionary. 

Our present contention, then, that in ordaining the 
constitution of the Church God made it a missionary 
society is beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. This 
appears from the import of the unrepealed Abrahamic 
covenant, from the, at bottom, missionary character of 
the Church under the Mosaic economy and from the New 
Testament teaching so abundant and clear that a wayfar- 
ing man, though a fool, may read it as he runs. 

It may seem strange that the Church of Christ should 
ever have become dead to the obligation to be mission- 
ary, as such; strange that real Christians should hav(? 
thought themselves excused from the duty of activeh' 
pushing the cause of Christ, in the face of all this evi- 
dence to the contrary. But owing to vicious views oi 
Christian doctrine and order which prevailed as early as 
the Nicene age of the Church, the Church as such and 
professing Christians for the most part lost consciousness 
of themselves as missionary. Only within the last four- 
score years have the Churches as such begun to re- 
awaken to their responsibilities. Only within a shorter 
period have the individual members begun to awaken in 
considerable numbers, to a sense of their duty. Even 
yet a large proportion of Church members have persist- 
ently refused to give practical recognition of their mis- 



24 Introduction to Christian Missions 

sionary obligations by putting their hands to the work. 
Hence our second contention that every member of the 
Church, in virtue of his Church membership, is a mem- 
ber of a missionary society, and stands pledged to do his 
utmost as such. 

That such is the case appears from the following 
simple considerations, viz.: ist. In the constitution of 
the Church as missionary, no provision appears for a 
non-missionary class of adult members. We shall not 
attempt to prove this negative. We have been able to 
find no such provision. The hearer is challenged, fear- 
lessly, to find anything of the kind between the lids of 
the Bible. Not all the members are required to be mis- 
sionaries in the technical sense of the term; but there 
is no provision for members not missionary in spirit. 
2nd. Christ has so fixed the conditions of membership 
as virtually to pledge all full members to the mission 
cause. It is amongst Christ's prerogatives to fix the con- 
ditions of membership in the body of which he is head. 
During his' ministry, he set forth the conditions on sev- 
eral occasions and with varying fullness. The compen- 
dious expositions of these conditions must, of course, be 
interpreted in the light of the fuller. In Luke xiv. 25, ff, 
we have the conditions of discipleship set forth with 
some degree of fullness to a great crowd, many persons 
amongst which were inclined to profess discipleship with- 
out counting the cost. These conditions include a love to 
Him greater than that a man bears his own father and 
mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters', 
yea, and his own life also; and a readiness to bear the 
cross of Christ and follow Him in a life to the glory of 
God and the good of men. Every member who, in be- 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 25 

coming such, acted intelligently, professed this supreme 
love to Christ and allegiance to Him as his leader. Only 
thus did he become a Church member. But Christ, as 
has appeared, has laid on the Church, on all in covenant 
with him by baptism, by positive injunction, to make 
disciples of all nations. It is incontrovertible that every 
member of the Church of Christ is a member of a God- 
ordained missionary society, in virtue of his membership 
in the Church. 

A few decades ago this would have seemed strange 
doctrine, notwithstanding its evident Scripturalness. The 
members of the Churches were strangely dead to their 
obligations. And even now, were a canvass' made of all 
the Churches a large percent, would be found asleep on 
this great business of their King, — a business in com- 
parison with which the greatest purely secular enterprises 
pursued in a purely secular Spirit, are but petty toy- 
making. There are many and gracious signs of a wide- 
spread awakening in our day. The members of our own 
beloved Church are, in considerable numbers, awaking 
to becoming endeavor in support of the mission cause. 
Yet the number of congregations in which every Chris- 
tian member, in a practical way, counts himself a member 
of a missionary society in virtue of being a Church mem- 
ber, is relatively small. 

It will be a part of your duty, my brethren, to try 
to arouse every member of your Church so to consider 
himself. The first General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church South sounded the true-note on this subject. 
That noble body passed a number of resolutions touching 
missions, amongst which was the following: 

"The General Assembly desires distinctly and delib- 
erately to inscribe on our Church's banner, as she now 



26 Introduction to Christian Missions 

first unfolds it to the world, in immediate connection with 
the headship of our Lord, his last command : 'Go ye into 
all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,' 
regarding this as the great end of her organization, and 
obedience to it as' the indispensable condition of her 
Lord's promised presence, and as one great comprehen- 
sive object, a proper conception of whose magnitude and 
grandeur is the only thing which, in connection with the 
love of Christ, can ever sufficiently arouse her energies 
and develop her resources as' to cause her to carry on, 
with the vigor and efficiency which true fealty to her 
Lord demands, those other agencies necessary to her 
internal growth and home prosperity. The claims of this 
cause ought therefore to be kept constantly before the 
minds of the people and pressed upon their consciences. 
The ministers and ruling elders, and deacons, and Sab- 
bath school teachers, and especially the parents, ought 
and are enjoined by the Assembly, to give particular at- 
tention to all those for whose religious' teaching they are 
responsible, in training them to feel a deeper interest in 
this work, to form habits of systematic benevolence, and 
to feel and respond to the claims of Jesus upon them for 
personal service in the field." 

It is yours to labor for the realization of these noble 
ideals in the hearts and minds of the people; and to 
bring on the day when every member of the Church shall 
see that in joining the Church, he became a member of 
the missionary society and pledged himself to labor to 
the utmost in the cause. 

We are now ready for our third contention, that the 
obligation to fuliill this pledge is imperative and exclusive. 

Every consideration advanced in support of the pre- 
ceding contentions shows that the pledge, involved in 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 2.^] 

the Church membership to be missionary, imposes upon 
us an imperative obHgation. The will of God that His 
Church should be missionary, the command of the Lord 
Jesus Christ on the Church and its members, makes the 
obligation imperative, as everybody should see, to be 
missionary as members' of His Church. 

This obligation is exclusive in the following respect: 
It forbids our doing our work as members of any society 
which takes the place of the Church. The Church, with 
its' members as such, has been commissioned of its Head 
and theirs to do this work. Hence the local Church 
should be its own missionary society; and the denomina- 
tion its own missionary society, as the Lord has appointed. 

The local Church may allow its' members to form 
themselves into groups for the study of missions and 
for mutual stimulation in giving, and otherwise laboring 
in behalf of the cause; and the denomination may allow 
interorganization between the groups for the like ends. 
But the local Church should not allow a number of its' 
members to form a volunteer organization to stand over 
against the rest of the Church and do its missionary 
work for it ; nor may the denomination allow a voluntary 
agency independent of the Church to do the missionary 
work of the Church for it. Nor should the members 
throw themselves' into such voluntary societies as are 
putting themselves in the place of the congregation or 
denomination in the mission work: God gave the work 
to the Church. It is usurpation for any man-made or- 
ganization to step into the Church's place in the work. 
God imposed the work on the Church with all its mem- 
bers. We should never do anything to relieve any Church 
member of the sense of the obligation resting on him as 
such to be missionary. 



28 Introduction to Christian Missions 

If it be said to you that the form of our Church 
organization is not of such a sort that the Church as 
such is' not suited to pushing the mission cause, for which 
compact organization is needed, then the answer should 
be, as in our own standards, God hath given in the Scrip- 
tures with sufficient clearness the faith the Church should 
hold, the government it should exercise and the worship 
it should engage in. To the Word with your Church, 
bring the Church into conformity with the pattern shown 
in the Word. Men are both incompetent to improve on 
the Bible teaching concerning the faith, government, or 
worship, of the Church and are interdicted from the at- 
tempt to do it. They are not fit to be the confidential 
advisers of the Most High about the means or the agent 
to be used in bringing the world to the foot of the cross. 

If it be said, our congregation or our denomination is 
dead to the call to this great cause, and unless individuals 
here and there get together and do the work which the 
Church ought to do but does not, it will not be done; 
something may have to be conceded. Certainly, not a 
hundred and twenty years ago there was almost universal 
apathy on the subject of foreign missions, and when the 
Church "is largely dead to her duty, when she is" prac- 
tically apostate in respect to one great function, when 
she will not take up and push the great enterprise which 
the Lord has' committed to her, shall consecrated souls 
here and there not be permitted to unite in societies and 
push as volunteers this cause? We must say to them 
the rather, God speed you in your way for the present. 
It is better that you express your love for Him in thisj 
way than not at all. We should also say to them, "Be- 
ware, however, of contentment with any mere portion 
of God's people as workers in the mission cause. The 



God's Ordained Missionary Society 29 

Church is of right the missionary society ; convert it into 
a missionary society. By prayer to God, by proclama- 
tion of the truth, by persuasive power of a godly walk, 
lead all the brethren of the Church to be workers' in this 
great cause; in the end resolve your independent volun- 
teer society which was begun independently of ecclesias- 
tical action into a committee of your Church. By all 
means annihilate the idea that the missionary obligations 
of the entire Church can be met by any portion of them 
called a 'missionary society.' " 

In some of our Churches in the past the whole burden 
of missions seems to have rested on the frail shoulders 
of a few women; some of them hardly so much moved 
by intelligent devotion to Christ's cause as by the social 
element in the life of their mission societies; in some 
cases not one of them making any sustained effort to lay 
aside as the Lord had prospered her; in some cases pay- 
ing with irregularity their small dues, and, for the rest, 
resorting to doubtful means to raise money; the men 
leaving the matter to the women, feeling that if they pa- 
tronized their suppers and purchased an occasional trifle 
for twice, or thrice, its commercial value, and contributed 
some loose pennies, — they had fully acquitted themselves. 

This' is little above childish, if not profane play at 
pushing the Lord's cause. It is yours, my brethren, in 
this dawn of a great missionary day, to help voice the 
imperative and exclusive claims of the Lord's missionary 
society; to teach every member of the Church, God's 
own mission society, that as such he must regard it as 
his highest duty to help take the world for Christ. 



LECTURE 11. 

The New Testament Principle to Regulate the 
Church's Missionary Effort. 

In the first lecture we attempted to ascertain the atti- 
tude toward missions, proper to the Church, according to 
the teaching of the Bible. We saw that the Bible repre- 
sented the Church as a God-ordained missionary society; 
every member of the Church as pledged to do his' part 
in the mission work of this society; and the obligation 
resting upon him in this capacity as imperative. 

The Bible making so much of missions, it is natural 
to expect in it some disclosure of a principle, or prin- 
ciples', properly regulative of the Church's missionary 
effort; which, if duly seized by the Church and given 
practical recognition in its life, will enable it to do the 
work with efficiency and success. Such disclosure may 
be looked for in the Book of Acts, which is the history 
of the spread of the Church under the special guidance 
of the Holy Ghost. Accordingly, we turn our attention 
to-day to that book; and, for convenience, somewhat 
narrowly on one verse of that book, a verse which may 
be called the Little Acts of the Apostles, and considered 
as an epitome of the whole book. That verse is Acts i. 8, 
"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost 
is come upon you: And ye shall he witnesses unto me 
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and 
unto the uttermost part of the earth." 

These words are sometimes' spoken of as being one 
form of the Apostolic commission. They do contain, 



The Regulative Principle 31 

by implication, a warrant granting certain powers and 
privileges to, and imposing certain duties upon, the 
Apostles. But they do not constitute formally such a 
warrant. They are sometimes spoken of as setting forth 
the apostolic mission. They do set forth that mission — 
the work to which the Apostles' were to devote their 
energies and their lives; but they do so incidentally and 
not of primary intention ; virtually and not formally. The 
tenses used in the text are futures, not imperatives ; and 
not futures for imperatives. They are not mandatory, 
but declarative. There is a mandate in the words, in-, 
deed, but it is there by implication alone. The words are 
sometimes' spoken of as a promise. They undoubtedly 
carry a promise, two glorious promises with them: the 
promise of a divine power, and the promise of a future 
victorious witness-bearing. But they do not constitute 
in form a promise. In form and in design they are a 
prophecy. They foretell what shall be. 

Being a revelation of God's will in regard to the 
Apostolic Church and its work, the words show the 
Apostles and the Church the plan with which they should 
fall-in, show them that they have a commission, a war- 
rant, to go about doing the things which the prophecy 
declares shall be done; show that their mission is, and 
is only, the accomplishment of what has' thus been pro- 
phesied. As the prophecy is of good things, of things 
which the Apostles, and all like-minded with them, de- 
sired to see fulfilled, the words stand to them in lieu of 
a promise. But in intention and effect they are, first of 
all, simply and solely a prophesy. 

This the Greek tenses of the text and the context 
show. The tenses are futures in form and should be 
construed as futures in sense unless there is' evident 



32 Introduction to Christian Missions 

reason to the contrary. Such ''evident reason is not 
found." The context favors the view that they are future 
in sense as well as in form. The Apostles had raised a 
question about a matter which they had hoped would 
occur in the future. They had asked the Lord whether 
he would at that time restore again the kingdom to Israel. 
They were forecasting. They desired from him a pro- 
phecy. The Master told them that it was not theirs to 
know "The times and the seasons which the Father hath 
put in his own power." Their wish with regard to this 
particular matter of inquiry was denied; the spirit of 
forecast was not rebuked, it was about to be redirected. 
He at once brought forth from the womb of the future 
something of which it could not be said: "It is not for 
you to know." He uttered these pregnant v/ords, "The 
Little Acts' of the Apostles." 

These words, every one sees at a glance, were spoken 
of the Church of the apostoHc age — of the Church in 
which the Apostles themselves were to be the chief wit- 
nesses. But they contain a principle which shotild regu- 
late the Church's propagandism to the end of time. They 
have a twofold content. They set forth the principle 
or law of the Church's propagandism, and foretell the 
first great instance of its outworking in the actual life 
of the Christian Church. In other words, instead of 
announcing the abstract principle which is to condition 
the spreading of the Church, they predict a concrete em- 
bodiment of that principle. In regarding the instance 
we must not overlook the more important thing, the prin- 
ciple, which will be worked out over and over again. 

We must remember the canon for the interpretation 
of prophecy, announced by Bacon: "Prophecy hath 
springing and germinant accomplishment." In propor- 



The Regulative Principle 33 

tion as the rapidity and soundness of the Church's growth 
increase, in that proportion, it will be discovered, has the 
law which governed the spread of the Church in the 
apostolic age been made the law again of the growing 
Church. 

We have, then, in Acts i. 8, the divinely preannounced 
principle regulative of the Church's effort at propagand- 
ism in the apostolic age; and, of right, regulative of its 
effort to the end of time. It is fair to conclude, a priori, 
that a proper study of the utterance would yield many 
valuable indications as to the way in which the Church 
of God to-day should go about its mission work. Let 
us, accordingly, proceed to this study. 

It will be helpful to study the fulfilment of the pro- 
phecy as wrought out in the history of the Apostolic 
Church. The principle underlying the divine method of 
working in missions will thus become clearly manifest. 
As we study the prophecy and its fulfilment, let us ask 
at every step, "Why?" Why wait at Jerusalem? Why 
bear witness first in Jerusalem and in all Judea? Why 
bear with-ness, second, in Samaria? Why bear witness, 
last, to the Gentiles? What is the core and heart of this 
prophecy for us ? What is the principle which the Church 
should apply over and over? How would God secure 
the accomplishment of his' plan? If our inquiry is an- 
swered by only a very moderate amount of light, it will 
be something to have set our minds going on the subject. 

There are four periods in the life of the Apostolic 
Church, all marked in the Acts, and all, likewise, dis- 
tinguished in the text: i. The period during which the 
disciples waited, according to Christ's bidding, in Jeru- 
salem. 2. The period of witness-bearing among the 
Jews. 3. The period among the Sam.aritan people. 4. 
The period amongst the Gentile nations. 



34 Introduction to Christian Missions 

To take up these periods in their order: 

1st. Why the period of waiting? To the Apostles 
themselves' the command to wait in Jerusalem until th^y 
should receive the promise might seem directly contrary 
to human wisdom. The disciples were few in numbers. 
They were obscure, despised and timid. They made next 
to no impression on the world. It was a time of weak- 
ness. It might have seemed that there was danger of 
their being crushed utterly in case of their not allowing 
themselves to be parted from Jerusalem, in case of their 
waiting there for the promise of their departed Lord. 
Or, escaping annihilation, it must have seemed that there 
was great danger of the utter disheartening of the dis- 
ciples by holding them in Jerusalem, waiting. It must 
have seemed that if they were to do anything for Christ, 
it behooved them to proceed to work at once ; for as the 
days passed would not all the devils of doubt tear at 
them? 

But Christ said, "Don't be parted from Jerusalem. 
Wait here for the promise : 'Ye shall receive power, after 
that the Holy Ghost is' come upon you.' " Though we 
may not fathom all his reasons, we are pretty safe in 
naming the following: 

First, He proposed to develop the quality of courage- 
ous faithfulness in the Apostles, and to prepare them for 
the reception of a larger amount of truth. He would 
enlarge their fidelity to himself. He had a most self- 
abnegating life in view for them. He desired in them 
men who would do anything which his cause required, 
men who would ride through any moral Balaklava for 
him; and so he put them through this spell of waiting. 
He knew that it makes a man, as well as takes a man, 
to stand still on a sinking Victoria merely because the 



The Regulative Principle 35 

order to ''Stand still" has been given. He knew that, in 
consequence of the great strain thus to be brought to 
bear on these men, they would come through with iron 
in their courage for him! and that by thus sticking to 
himself through those days, like brave soldiers of a for- 
lorn hope, they would get far along towards being in- 
virteibles' at the end of the test. Moreover, he had, at 
the end of the days of waiting, much truth to open to 
them. 

Mr. Frederick W. Robertson calls obedience "the 
organ of spiritual knowledge"; and our Lord, himself, 
teaches that, "if any man do his will, he shall know of 
the doctrine, whether it be of God." Obedience to God's 
known will fits for a larger apprehension of that will. 
A great growth was designed to go on in the disciples' 
while they were waiting; and did go on. The event 
which separates this period from the next, viz. : the out- 
pouring of the Holy Ghost, was so great, did so much 
to bring about the change in the attitude of the disciples 
toward the world, that we are in danger of forgetting 
the preparaion for the change which had previously been 
going on in the hearts of the disciples. We do well, 
however, to inquire whether, without the preparation, 
those vessels would have been able to receive the gifts in 
such measure as were poured out into them. A hogshead 
of water connot be put together in a gallon bucket. Nor 
can there be poured all at once the greatest wealth of 
spiritual gifts into a shrunken soul. There was a move- 
ment from both ends of the line about the time of the 
Pentecost: God poured out, from above, the heavenly 
gifts of the Spirit ; but they fell upon men, who, by their 
hard obedience to himself, had been Hfted up and made 
able to receive his gifts. Now, this uplift in power to 



36 Introduction to Christian Missions 

follow Christ, fully, and this enlargement of capacity for 
the reception of heavenly gifts, were most important 
reasons for Christ's bidding the disciples to wait till the 
Pentecost. 

Second, the disciples were bidden to wait because 
Christ saw that the effect of the outpouring would be 
greater at Pentecost than at an earlier time. There are 
nicks of time that are all-important. There were to be 
present at that feast representatives from almost every 
civilized nation under the sun. News of the great event 
was to be carried widely over the world, and make in 
many directions for the spread of Christ's kingdom. 

Third, they were to wait because, again, they could 
not work with effect until God had sent down upon them 
the Holy Spirit ; until God had made them forever certain 
that he was with them and had made clear forever to 
their minds' the true nature of Christ's work. The out- 
pouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost was a blessed 
rain that washed out the atmosphere. It was the glori- 
ous sunlight chasing away the darkness and enabling the 
Church to see the truth and that it had the truth. It was' 
something more than this — an enduement with miracu- 
lous powers, an enriching of their gracious equipment 
generally — an uplift of the whole nature; but the com- 
munication of the truth and the certification to the dis- 
ciples that they had the truth gave the Pentecostal out- 
pouring its chief significance to the disciples. It made 
clear to them that their crucified, risen, ascended Lord 
was with them, their invincible leader through the agency 
of the Holy Ghost. 

The first period was, therefore, a period of great im- 
portance. The disciples had been elevated vastly in cha'f- 
arter by the discipline of waiting, they had been taught 



The Regulative Principle 37 

the propriety of looking for the strategic moment by the 
coming of the outpouring not earlier but at Pentecost. 
They had been prepared by infilling with the truth and 
certification that they had it, to preach with impelling 
conviction. 

The outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost made 
the first epoch. The equipment of the Apostolic Church 
for witnessing was thereby so far completed, that the 
Church was to proceed to the work of testifying at once. 
"And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem 
and in all Judea." 

2nd. Why was the witnessing to be first of all in 
Jerusalem and in all Judea? Why first of all to the 
Jews? Among the reasons which can be seen, we note: 

First, that men might have assured evidence of the 
resurrection of Christ. The disciples' of Christ began 
their testimony to his resurrection from the dead, not in 
remote Galilee, but in the town in which he had suffered, 
and in the hearing of those who had nailed him to the 
cross. The mediaeval miracles were generally first af- 
firmed in places and in time remote from those in which 
they were said to have occurred. The same is true of 
the "miracles of Mohammed." But the greatest miracle 
of Christ, his own resurrection from the dead, his dis- 
ciples witness to in the weeks succeeding its occurrence 
and under the eyes of his' murderers. This fact adds to 
the comfortable certainty of the Christian world till to- 
day. It was proper that the Apostles should at first work 
where they could best preserve to the Church of all the 
future the cardinal fact of the resurrection of the Lord 
Jesus from the dead. So doing was an essential condi- 
tion to effective work in propagating Christianity in every 
subsequent age of the Church. 



38 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Second, God would magnify his mercies to the chil- 
dren of Jacob. Therefore, the witnessing was to be first 
to the Jews. The children of Jacob had strong race 
prejudices, and if they were to be converted, the change 
would be attended by less friction before their Gentile 
brothers should be led into the Christian fold. The 
previous acceptance of Christianity by the Gentiles 
would have made it much more unacceptable to the Jew- 
ish race. A Jew's embracing Christianity under such 
conditions had involved his taking openly into fellowship 
the uncircumcised and swine^eating Gentile. It is plain 
that the witnesses of Jesus were in the best condition for 
testifying effectively to the Jews concerning Jesus before 
they had, according to Jewish thought, contaminated 
themselves by preaching among the Gentiles. Not to 
have worked among the Jews first would have been to 
have treated them with less kindness than the Gentiles. 

But God would fulfill his promise of a Saviour to 
Israel which of old he had called out of Ur of the Chil- 
dees, which he had brought up out of Egypt with a high 
hand and an outstretched arm, which he had brought 
back from Babylon, which he had ever kept in the hol- 
low of his hand. He would multiply his mercies upon 
Israel. He had already sent the Saviour even to death. 
But the people had not generally recognized him up to 
the time of his crucifixion. The crowning proof of the 
Messiah-ship was Christ's resurrection from the dead; 
and that Israel might have unimpeachable evidence that 
the Saviour had been sent, it was fitting that they should 
have the fact of the resurrection substantiated beyond 
a doubt. God proved to them, therefore, under circum- 
stances which permitted the freest examination of the 
evidence that Christ had risen from the dead. He made? 
che disciples witness to the resurrection first to the Jews/1 



The Regulative Principle 39 

Third, Jesus bade his disciples bear witness first of 
all in Jerusalem and in all Judea, that he might secure a 
missionary host with which speedily to take the rest of 
the world. Of all the peoples' in the world at that time, 
the Jewish people were, perhaps, the best fitted to make 
Christians of a high order of usefulness in the further 
spread of the truth. They were eminent for civic and 
moral virtues. They had higher notions of the inviola- 
bility of truth, duty, and of God. They were ca- 
pable of nobler enthusiasm and stronger devotion. 
Such qualities in the first converts were matters of no 
inconsiderable importance, if the Gospel was to become 
widespread. God does not, as a rule, make Christians of 
the same power out of natural men of unequal power. 
The engines are of different sizes. God may fill each 
full of the fire and water of life ; but the engines are 
not thereby brought to the same power. The witnessing 
was first to the children of Abraham, that that superior 
race once Christianized might become the source ol 
mighty instruments for the further spread of the truth. 

Fourth, Jesus' bade the witnessing first among the 
Jews, that economy of force might be used in the preach- 
ing of the disciples. The witnesses were all in Judea. 
The simple principle of the economy of force and time 
dictated that the land in which the witnesses were, all 
other things being equal, should be the first arena of 
witnessing. Every unnecessary change of place involves 
a loss of precious time. 

Fifth, the disciples themselves had need of being bap- 
tized into universal Christianity before they could witness 
to others than Jews. The question which the Apostles 
had asked Christ about the establishment of his kingdom 



40 Introduction to Christian Missions 

(i. 6), shows somewhat of their circumscribed views. 
Their after history makes it plain that they were warped 
sadly by the narrowest prejudices. Before God could use 
them in their whole personalities in the spread of his 
truth among the Gentiles, he had to lift them to a plane 
clear above the childish and confined one on which they 
stood on the day of Ascension. They had to take in the 
truth which months before Christ had announced to the 
woman of Samaria, when he said, "Woman, believe me, 
the hour cometli, when ye shall neither in this mountain 
nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father . . . But the 
hour Cometh, and now is, when the true worshiper shall 
worship the Father in spirit and in truth." The early 
Church had to be weaned from the juvenile pap of Juda- 
ism before it could witness abroad. 

The foregoing are at least some of the reasons which 
made Judea and Jerusalem the most proper field of labor 
for the apostolic band and Church during the second 
period of apostolic history. Gathering these reasons. up, 
we note : During this period the Holy Ghost was leading 
the Church to work in the territory in which, in addition 
to gathering in great nj^mbers, its incidental service to 
the Church throughout its entire history would be the 
greatest. He was leading the Church to go about its task 
of disciplining the whole world in a tactical and strategic 
way leading it to strive for converts from the Jews when 
with least of prejudice they could accept Christianity, 
leading it to endeavor to get out of these vigorous and 
powerful people a body of effective workers to turn loose 
on the rest of the world as propagators of Christianity, 
studying also, economy in the use of the body of workers 
at command. In short, we see that He was leading the 



The Regulative Principle 41 

Church of the period to labor where its toil would result 
in the most efficient working force of Christians for the 
achievement of the great task of the future. 

Acting, thus far, on Christ's plan, the disciples, by 
the Spirit's aid, had won for Christ a great body of fol- 
lowers among God's chosen people. Chapters ii. to vi., 
inclusive, of Acts, show that the progress of the Christian 
movement in Judea during this period became like that 
of a swelling river. At length the time came when the 
levees which confined this' beneficent stream to Judea 
should have been cut by the disciples, and vivifying 
channels should have been carried into the arid wastes 
of the non- Jewish world. The work in Judea had reached 
the stage at which the witnesses of Jesus should have 
begun to go into the regions' beyond. The truth of the 
resurrection had been amply confirmed. God had suffi- 
ciently magnified his mercy to the seed of Jacob. A host 
to work as missionaries had been secured. The economy 
of force now demanded the removal of a portion of the 
laborers to another part of the vineyard. The liberal- 
izing of the Jewish converts had been going on, as the 
speech of Steven shows'. Everything pointed to the fact 
that the time had come for the Church to widen its 
sphere, the time to take into the scope of its endeavor 
some more of the whole world which Jesus had commis- 
sioned it to disciple. But God's kindlier pointings of 
providence, as well as his' repeated commands, were not 
respected. The Almighty has often had to touch his 
people to remind them that he has spoken. He had to 
quicken the Apostolic Church at this juncture. Up to 
this time God had been holding in check the enemies of 
the Church and mightily confirming the disciples' testi- 
mony by granting signs and wonders' to be done, leading 



42 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Joseph like a flock. Now he unleashes the hounds of 
persecution. 

The stoning of Stephen and the persecution that fol- 
lowed, recorded in the seventh and eighth chapters of 
Acts, make another epoch. The witnessing, well done 
among the Jews, while not discontinued there, is' to be 
done now in Samaria ; and God sends the disciples there, 
though it takes a persecution in Judea to do it. 

3rd. Why was the witnessing next in Samaria? As 
we have seen, during the previous period of witness- bear- 
ing, the minds' of the disciples had been in constant 
preparation for wider work. The spiritual nature of 
Christ's kingdom had taken a fuller hold on them. They 
had come to regard heaven as the throne of God, the 
earth as his footstool, and no house or place as large 
enough to contain Him. Their absolute confidence, in the 
support and guidance of the ascended Christ had been 
made firmer. Their likeness to him in his universal love 
for man had become more thorough-going. They were 
more able to feel his love for all men, Jews and Gentiles 
as well. Their personal devotion to Christ had been deep- 
ened. But, though freed, in a degree, of prejudice, the 
minds of the disciples were still biased. They were still 
Jews, with much of the Jews'' sense of superiority to 
other peoples, and most of the Jews' horror at the life 
of the uncircumcised. And it was manifest that if a 
people existed outside the pale of Jewry with whom an 
affiliation was more easily possible that with any other, 
it was the Samaritan. This was, perhaps', the chief 
reason why the Gospel was to be carried next fo the 
Samaritans. The Jewish Christians could mingle with 
Samaritans with comparative ease. The Samaritans were 
circumcised, and would submit to any Jewish rite which 
the older Church in Jerusalem might impose. ' 



The Regulative Principle 43 

A second reason why the Gospel was to be carried 
next into Samaria after its carrying into Judea, was the 
consideration that the Samaritans had some truth, and 
were thus prepared to receive more. They had the books 
of Moses, and from then an approximately correct notion 
of God. They had shared in the belief of a coming: 
Messiah. There were probably many earnest and devout 
spirits among them. They had received and profited by 
some wayside teaching of our Lord while he was engaged 
in his earthly ministry. Their receiving the first wit- 
nessing outside of Judea was an example of the general 
principle, ''To him that hath shall be given." 

Reasons' analogous to some of those which dictated 
the evangeHzation of Judea first might be added as among 
those that determined the evangelization of Samaria 
second. But the suggestion is enough for the student. 
The cords of Zion were lengthened and the stakes 
strengthened by working the representatives of the cross 
where they were capable of working with effect, taking 
advantage of an open and convenient door. The field 
seems to have been worked rapidly and perhaps Hghtly; 
as befitted the history and nature of that religion mixing 
and generally unimportant people. 

In following God's plan as to the work in Samaria, 
the disciples had taken a long stride toward universal 
Christianity. They had opened their doors to a multi- 
tude which no man could number, which was not found 
in Samaria certainly. They had taken down the great 
wall of partition that cut off the blessed light from the 
non-Jewish world. The Jewish Christian Church rihll 
split its shell and prepared for a higher stage of life. 
In taking in the Samaritans, the whole Jewish Church in 
Christ had made ready for the final step into universal 
Christianity. 



44 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Meanwhile God had prepared two men, under whose 
leadership Jewish Christianity was to make the final step 
of transition into this universal Christianity. God had 
said : "Ye shall be witnesses' unto m.e, both in Jerusalem 
and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost 
part of the earth." The Church may lag, but God works ! 
He had prepared Paul and Peter. "The blood of martyrs 
is the seed of the Church." The fruit of the martyrdom 
of Stephen was, in part, the Apostle Paul. Saul was 
allowed to continue for a time his persecutions, but at 
length, under God's further providence toward, and mira- 
culous grace upon him, he took up the work which had 
cost Stephen his life. 

Peter had heard the great commission from the lips 
of his Lord, to preach the Gospel to all the world, and 
the solemn words of the text, and much more to the 
same purport. But men are slow to learn, even inspired 
men and apostles, and God was under the necessity of 
teaching Peter again by providence and miracle. Accord- 
ingly, by the vision of the unclean which had been 
cleansed, by the commission to go to the house of Cor- 
nelius, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon 
the household of that devout Centurion, God had taught 
Peter to receive the Gentiles into his Church. 

Thus had God prepared them to lead his Church into 
broader views' of Christianity. Meanwhile, certain ob- 
scure Christians had begun to work in the regions beyond 
Judea and Samaria. Thank God for the good that ob- 
scure Christians have done, and can do. 

Some obscure Christians who had been driven from 
Jerusalem and had gone as far as Antioch, had preached 
there to the Gentiles. The Church of Jerusalem had 
sent Barnabas' to take care of the converts and help on 



The Regulative Principle 45 

the work. Barnabas soon called in Saul of Tarsus to 
help him. 

The fourth period of Apostolic history was now be- 
gun. Christianity had doffed its Jewish dress. Under 
the moving of the Holy Spirit the Church sends picked 
men, among them Barnabas and Saul, to the Gentiles' 
beyond. 

The mighty missionary conquests of the Apostolic 
age were pushed with Napoleonic vigor and seraphic de- 
votion by Paul and his helpers. Asia Minor, Macedonia, 
Greece, Italy, and Spain perhaps, were overrun by this 
band of the army of Christ. Acts, chapters xvi.-xxviii., 
gives' us only a part of the course of Paul. The most 
reliable traditions indicate that what Paul was doing in 
one direction the other Apostles were doing in other 
directions. Now and again the Church had to pause to 
fortify herself in positions already taken. Such a pause 
was the council of Jerusalem, to stop the putting Chris- 
tianity back into its Jev/ish dress, which it had continued 
to wear as long as the converts were all Jews. But the 
pauses were brief. The world was hers ; and Christian- 
ity, the world religion, went forth to conquer the world 
to its uttermost part. In the conquering effort the Church 
used the methods, evangelistic, literary, medical, and, 
within limits', the educational and industrial. 

The law of missionary endeavor in this period among 
the Gentiles continued to be: To bear witness as filled 
with the Holy Spirit, first, to Jews, and then to Samari- 
tans, and then to Gentiles. The witnesses went first to 
the Jews, and then to the proselytes, and then to the 
Gentiles : "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy 
Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto 
me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, 



46 Introduction to Christian Missions 

and unto the uttermost part of the earth." The latter 
half of these words has more than a geographical signi- 
ficance. Their order is significant. The Gospel was to 
be preached, Urst^ in one place, then in another, and then 
in the other. Their significance is still more inclusive. 
The gospel was to be preached to different kinds of 
peoples — peoples differently related to the kingdom of 
God, — in a given order. These words contain, in part, 
the plan of God for the Church's testifying, the divinely 
revealed principle to be applied in its' propagation. It 
may be difficult to state the principle well. But taking 
the words in their setting, and bearing in mind the chief 
end of man, which must condition the interpretation of 
all such passages, they seem to yield the following : The 
Church shall first get the truth and the certainty that it 
has the truth, then it shall witness where its witnessing 
will result in the most effective additional army of wit- 
ness-hearers, for the future. Perhaps we do best to 
leave the law as set forth in its living concrete form in 
Holy Writ, only endeavoring to see its' whole content of 
meaning. 

Having seen how this prophecy was wrought out in 
the apostolic age, and the principle that lay imbedded in 
it, it remains to draw from it some corollaries for the 
Church's guidance in our own day. Amongst these are: 

First. The missionary society of to-day, and the 
Church should be the missionary society, should know 
God's truth and know that it knows it, and have the cour- 
age to stand for it against all antagonists. Why were the 
disciples bidden to wait in Jerusalem until they should 
receive the outpouring of the Holy Ghost? In part tha'l 
they might have developed in them a capacity of receiv- 
ing the truth and that Holy Ghost might make to them 



The Regulative Principle 47 

unmistakably plain that the truth was theirs, and that 
they had, in the truth, the instrument of salvation. He 
made more clear to them the truth they already had. He 
communicated other truth to them. And one of the 
things which a church of this age needs is to get hold, 
by consecrated effort and the Spirit's help, of the truth 
into which the Spirit led the Apostles, — is to know the 
truth we seem to preach, to knozv it and know that we 
know it. 

The disciples were bidden to wait in Jerusalem, in 
part also, that their fidehty might be tried and strength- 
ened. The Church would be better off to-day with fewer 
men and more Christian manhood. It needs men who 
dare to stand for it against all, and live faithfully. If 
the Church could preach the truth with apostolic cer- 
tainty, and live the truth with Apostolic fidelity, it would 
soon do its' part in winning the whole world for Christ. 

Second. The Church should preach Christianity as a 
religion accredited by genuine miracles. Why did the 
Apostles linger at Jerusalem to witness first there? In 
part, to make the stronger testimony for the resurrection 
of Christ; to make themselves the better able to preach 
a religion vindicated as divine in its origin by miracles. 
It is fashionable to-day in certain quarters of our country 
to instruct young missionaries to make nothing of the 
miraculous side of Christianity. They are instructed to 
call attention rather to its superior moral code, "as the 
world does not receive the miraculous readily." Now, 
we are to be discreet in presenting religion, of course. 
But Christianity uneviscerated has to do with miracles, 
and can be ultimately proven to the spiritually unen- 
lightened only by miracle. Jesus of Nazareth bound up 
hi^ system with the claim of miraculous powers and 



48 Introduction to Christian Missions 

miraculous acts' in such a way that, on the one hand, 
miracles are a part of his teaching, and, on the other, his 
system cannot be proven true if his miracles are denied 
or disused. The Church should faithfully preach the 
Gospel, not bereft of the miraculous' element, though it 
may be foolishness to the Japanese and a stumbling- 
block to the Chinaman. 

Third. The Church should learn adequately the reli- 
gious condition of the world, so as to know where it can 
most effectively push its' witnessing for Christ, and should 
push it there. 

If we have been even approximately right in giving 
the reasons why the witness' was to be first in Jerusalem 
and in all Judea, then in Samaria, then in the Gentile 
world, then this duty of the Church of to-day must seem 
very plain. The Church cannot otherwise follow the 
plan of God; cannot distinguish the Jew, Samaritan, and 
the Gentile ; cannot witness to the best effect, cannot wit- 
ness so as to make to-morrow's host of witnesses the 
most effective. 

Are our people, our elders, our ministers, earnest 
enough in acquainting themselves with the relative op- 
portunities in the different parts of the hom^e fields' — ^the 
relative opportunity in the Black Belt in Virginia, say, 
and in Arkansas — and the relative needs in the great 
regions beyond ? Do they ask, as they should, where they 
can work the work that will count most for Christ? Or, 
is there in missions case after case of zeal without knowl- 
edge — of blind hitting out, if, perchance, something may 
be done? Are there other cases where selfish considera- 
tions are all-determining, e. g., the desire to work up 
a little corner in one's own Presbytery because it is one's 
own? Is not blind Sampson a good image of the Church 

I 

1 



The Regulative Principle 49 

of to-day as it works? Thank God, the Church is doing 
great things ! But is bhnd Sampson better than Sampson 
with his eyes, and looking equally to God, would have 
been? How much we lose by reason of want of com- 
prehension of the situation ! Who now does not believe 
that the ninth decade was the decade in which the Chris- 
tian Church should have taken the Japanese for Christ? 
The hour passed and Japan was not taken. 

To some the demand that the Church should get a 
good outlook on the condition of the world so as to 
judge intelligently as to where to strike for Christ may 
seem very large; but is not God wont to make big de- 
mands of us ? And does he not demand the use of every 
power? And has he ever granted to the man of business 
the right to wrap himself in secular affairs so as not to 
be able to study to see where he can do most to forward 
the kingdom of God? Has he given a right to any 
preacher to preach on, where he happens to be born, with- 
out asking where he can serve God best? 

The passage before us teaches that there should be 
the wisest circumspection — the fields of effort chosen 
with the greatest care and chosen with the simple view of 
forwarding the kingdom of God. It makes a demand for 
no inconsiderable knowledge on the part of the Church 
in general. It makes a demand for a commanding 
knowledge on the part of the ministers and leaders of 
the Church. No system of theological education can be 
complete which does not give the student at least some 
hold on the religious condition of the world; which does 
not set before him with some precision the great problem 
in the solution of which he is to pour out his life ; which 
does not begin to answer for him the question as to 
wh^re there is the greatest need of workers in order to 



50 Introduction to Christian Missions 

the proper forwarding of the work. To hold any other 
position is to avow one's self a trifler. Especially should 
our secretaries of the work at home and abroad know 
the field and where the harvest is ripe. They, of all 
men, should never forget that the missionary is to search 
not for captives, but for recruits in the army of witness- 
bearers in which they are captains ; that the Church 
should be hunting for the most effective additions to 
God's servants. Nor should they forget that they are 
to consult the economy of force and time, whether that 
economy demands concentrating of force on a given field, 
or scattering the force; and that they are to consult the 
currents of race prejudice and a host of such like things. 

Fourth. The Church should select its instruments for 
the several parts of its witness-bearing according to their 
several kinds and degrees of fitness'. This is implied in 
the foregoing points, but deserves specific statement. It 
was illustrated in apostolic history. Should not our mis- 
sionary secretaries from year to year be writing to the 
Presbyteries to indicate to them their young men judged 
by them to be fitted for mission work? 

Under the guidance of the Church courts and the 
Holy Ghost, Paul was' sent to the Gentiles. Why? Be- 
cause by the breadth of his intellect and heart he was the 
fittest Christian of the day for the work. Previously, 
the Holy Ghost had sent Peter to receive, by baptism, the 
first uncircumcised converts into the Christian Church. 
Why? Peter was the man for such a bold innovation on 
seeing that it was right. 

The Holy Ghost reveals not his guidance in such 
miraculous wise in the present. But he speaks through 
the Church when he will. The Church courts may act 
under his guidance. And the Church through her courts 



The Regulative Principle 51 

should choose all her special agents carefully. The vol- 
untary element has had too large a place in missions at 
home and abroad, as it has had in determining who shall 
be ministers. It has too large a place now. The courts 
should pick the men for all the places, especially for tlie 
hard places. The Lord prefers to win his great victories 
by the three hundred chosen according to his own test, 
rather than by ten thousand simple volunteers, though 
they be men of courage. To illustrate, if our courts had 
picked with sufficient care, our home missionaries, that 
work would be better supported ; if they had picked with 
sufficient care our foreign missionaries, there had been 
fewer returned missionaries, and with larger results, 
perhaps. 

Fifth. Inclusively, the Church should study day by 
day to secure the most efficient additional army of wit- 
ness-bearers. It should study to knov/ God's plan, and 
should fall in with it. God says to the Christians of this 
age : "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost 
has come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me 
in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth." Ye shall witness in that 
order which shall result in the most effective increase to 
the army of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord give his 
Church the grace to do this great thing which he has 
commanded ! 

Sixth. While, in accord with the apostolic model, 
the evangelistic method should be largely used in the pro- 
pagation of the Gospel, the history of the apostolic eflfort 
shows that the literary arm, the medical and the indus- 
trial arms perhaps, have the sanction of apostolic example. 

In conclusion, the Church should consider whether 
God may not make it suffer if it lags in the outworking 



52 Introduction to Christian Missions 

of his plan. If his plan is such as' has been represented 
in the preceding pages, the Church, working according 
to any other, must have a relatively feeble growth. No 
plan can be so good for God's Church as his own. The 
adoption of any other plan is, that far, apostasy more- 
over, and the apostate always suffers'. Out of fear of 
the sons of Anak, the Israelites would not enter Canaan 
according to God's plan. Their bones strewed the desert 
They tired of God's rule over them in the time of Samuel ; 
they got an earthly king, but he became possessed of an 
evil spirit. The history of the people of God is proof, 
the most convincing, that they should follow his plan, 
even if it does seem difficult. 



LECTURE III. 

Paul's Sense of his Obligation to Missions and the 
Way in which He Responded to It. 

In the first lecture we endeavored to show that the 
Church is the missionary society ordained of God, that all 
its members are virtually pledged as such to missionary 
effort; and that they rest under an imperative and rela- 
tively exclusive obligation to fulfill their pledge. In the 
second lecture we endeavored to set forth the principle, 
divinely revealed, which should regulate the Church's 
missionary effort, and to draw out some of the more 
evident corollaries, of proper application to the Church 
of to-day in its effort to propagate the faith. In .this lec- 
ture we propose to take up the great outstanding mission- 
ary of the apostolic age, observe his sense of the obli- 
gation to be missionary himself and how he responded 
to the obligation. 

That we may bring the truth home the better, when we 
have brought it out concerning him, we shall ask whether 
on some of the same grounds with Paul the whole Church 
of to-day should not be adjudged under obligations to be 
missionary; and, finally, we shall raise the further ques- 
tion, whether Christians of to-day are meeting their obli- 
gations in the matter. 

Taking up Paul's sense of obligation to be missionary : 
He has left the world no possibility of doubt on this 
subject. He says, in Rom. i. 14, "For I am a debtor both 
to the Greeks and also to the Barbarians; both to the 
wise and also to the unwise/' He tells us here that he 



54 Introduction to Christian Missions 

owes the giving of the Gospel to these peoples. The 
context makes' it clear that the thing he owed, the thing 
he had in mind when he says, "I am a debtor," was the 
giving of the Gospel. Before penning the text he wrote 
to the Roman Christians that he had longed to see them, 
that he might impart unto them some spiritual gift to the 
end that they might be established, that he and they might 
be comforted together, by the mutual faith both of them 
and him; and that he had longed to have some fruit 
among them also even as among other Gentiles. Having 
uttered the confession of obligation, "I am a debtor," etc., 
he immediately adds, "So, as much as in me is, I am 
ready to preach the Gospel to you that are in Rome also." 
Hence some of the best commentators, as Drs. Charles 
Hodge, and Shedd, supply the word euaffeXiSo.Sdac 
which means to preach the Gospel, after the word debtor : 
"I am a debtor to preach the Gospel, both to the Greeks 
and also to the Barbarians." 

When Paul declares his obligation to preach the 
Gospel to the Greeks and also to the Barbarians, he makes 
a division of peoples' for the purpose of Including all, — 
a division that was common among the classic Greeks. 
The Eleatic stranger in Plato's Statesman says, "In this 
part of the world, they cut off the Greeks as one species', 
and all the other species of mankind they include under 
the single name of 'barbarians'." Paul professes himself 
to be under obligation to preach the Gospel to all peoples 
according to opportunity, to the Greeks and to the non- 
Greeks. He is to preach, also, to the wise, to those who 
are cultured and learned, and he is to preach to the un- 
wise, to the simple, to those who are without culture and 
without learning. He is to preach to all peoples ; he is to 
preach to the wise of all peoples, and to the unwise o:c all 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 55 

peoples, — to all classes of all peoples'. In short he pro- 
fesses his obligation to give the Gospel to all the world 
so far as opportunity offers and ability enables. 

It ought to be a profitable thing for us, my brethren, 
to consider the grounds' of this obligation which Paul 
professes as resting on him, to consider how he responded 
to it, to raise the question as to whether a similar obliga- 
tion rests on Church members of to-day; and if that be 
true, to consider the further question as to how we are 
responding to the obligation resting on us? 

I. In the first place, then, let us note the grounds on 
which Paul had a right to conclude that he was under 
obligation to give the Gospel to all the world, according 
to abilities and opportunities given him. 

We remark, ist, that Paul was under an imperative 
obligation to work for the increased well-being of all 
men, on the ground that he was his brother's keeper. The 
law which has' been expressed in the form, "Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself," was concreated in the 
heart of man. Had God never said to man in words, 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it would have 
been man's duty to love his fellow-man, — to be his 
brother's keeper. Had Paul known neither Gospel nor 
law, it would have been his duty to share whatsoever 
good things he possessed with those who lacked. His 
fellow-men were God's creatures as well as he. With 
them as' God's creatures, he God's creature and made in 
the divine image, was morally bound to share the greater 
riches he possessed. He was morally bound thus to serve 
God in the service of his creatures. The more valuable the 
gifts to him, the greater his obligation to share them with 
his fellows and thus give them occasion for gratitude 
and devotion to the common Creator and providential 



56 Introduction to Christian Missions 

ruler. Give Paul the Gospel, and in the absence of ex- 
press command to carry his brother the Gospel, it is his 
duty to carry that good news to his fellow-man wherever 
he can be found the world over. As his brother's keeper, 
he is bound to share the Gospel with every accessible 
brother ; he is bound to try to secure access to the remote 
and hitherto inaccessible and to share it with him up to 
the limit of his powers and opportunities. It is his duty 
to declare the glory of God's grace to his brother as ex- 
hibited in the Gospel; his duty to open the way for that 
brother's fuller appreciation of, and higher service of, 
God; his duty to give that brother a chance to secure a 
nobler well-being, and to evolve himself, as helped by 
the divine grace, into a nobler servant of God. 

Let us observe that this ground of obligation holds, 
however unworthy Paul's brothers may be. Suppose he 
knows that stoning awaits him at their hands as at 
Lystra, or stripes as at Philippi, or bonds and imprison- 
ments as at Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome, he is still 
under obligation to preach the Gospel at Lystra, at Phil- 
ippi, at Jerusalem, at Caesarea and at Rome ; not, it may 
be, under obligations to these peoples in themselves con- 
sidered, but viewed as the creatures of God. He owes 
it to God to serve Him by serving God's creatures who 
need the service. 

This concreated law has been reinforced by its publi- 
cation in the Decalogue. In that code, God brought out in 
preceptive form the principles' which were of right in 
force prior to their annunciation in word. On the tables 
of stone the Almighty fingered the eternal principles of 
right, and gave to them the added force of articulately 
enacted law, divinely revealed precept. To Paul the law 
came not only as eternal principle, but also as the re- 



Paul''s Obligation to Missions 57 

vealed will of God. Hence he felt the obligation to give 
the Gospel to all men to be imperative. 

We remark, 2nd, the obligation implied in discipleship 
to the Lord Jesus Christ, demanded of a man of Paul's 
gifts and opportunities that he should devote himself to 
the immediate work of spreading the Gospel among all 
peoples and all classes. 

Paul was wonderfully endowed to be a propagator of 
any faith he should espouse. Homely in appearance, per- 
haps, he was yet intensely magnetic. He drew men and 
bound them to him as' with bands of steel. He had the 
largeness of character that enabled him to appreciate men 
of all nations and all cHmes. Appreciating others, he was 
himself appreciated. He had a mind to grasp with mas- 
terful ease the great principles of his religious system, to 
discern with logical certainty and exactness their corol- 
laries, and to body them forth in language, always of 
vigor and power, sometimes of rare charm, beauty and 
sublimity. If to some ears his speech was wanting in 
polish, he was nevertheless a man of broad culture and 
the vastest learning. His energy of will and his power to 
execute his plans were Titanic. 

The man of this rare combination of gifts looked 
forth on fields white to the harvest to which our Saviour 
had pointed; he saw the fewness of the laborers, the 
vast extent of the field ; and that there was no insuperable 
obstacle to his' devoting himself immediately to the pro- 
pagation of the Christian faith. 

He knew that, when Jesus saved him from the conse- 
quences' of sin, He saved him as his absolute Lord, — saved 
him that thenceforth Paul might be his servant. He 
heartily acquiesced in this. At the very beginning of his 
Christian life, he inquired of the glorified Saviour who 



58 Introduction to Christian Missions 

had appeared to him on the way to Damascus, "Lord, 
what wilt thou have me do ?" He continued to hold that 
he ought to be devoted to the business of his' Lord. Far 
on in life we hear him say that Christ "died for all, that 
they which Hve, should not henceforth live unto them- 
selves, but unto him which died for them and rose again." 
Thus he makes the very purpose of Christ's death to 
have been that he should win men who should take up 
his work and carry it on. 

In becoming a disciple of Christ he had to do so on 
Christ's terms, he had to make a place in his heart and 
life for Christ and his cause which was foremost; and 
this necessary condition of true discipleship was in accord 
with right. God in Christ had bought him with His own 
precious blood. He had sanctified him by His own Spirit. 
In due time He would take him to glory. Paul had no 
choice but to feel that his chief duty, as a disciple of 
Christ, was to spread the Gospel world-wide, to push for- 
ward the great cause that lay nearest the heart of his 
crucified Lord. Apart from any call to the Apostleship, 
Paul must have been a religious teacher to his people and 
time, unless he could have done more to secure the spread 
of the kingdom in some other way. For it was clear to 
him that the disciple must give himself to the course 
most furthering of his Lord's cause. 

We remark, 3rd, Paul had received an open and ex- 
press call to giv-e the Gospel to those who had it not, and 
especially to the Gentiles, as an apostolic missionary. 

Paul's age was an extraordinary age. There was 
an extraordinary need ; he had an extraordinary designa- 
tion to his work. Rather, he received a succession of 
such designations'. The glorified Saviour, appearing to 
the arch-persecutor on the way to Damascus, said in an- 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 59 

swer to Saul's "Who art Thou, Lord?" "I am Jesus 
whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy 
feet : For I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to 
make thee a minister and a witness both of these things 
which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I. 
will appear unto thee: Delivering thee from the people 
and from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee, to 
open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, 
and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may 
receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them 
which are sanctified by faith that is in me." (Acts xxvi. 
15-18). Later, when Paul was come to Jerusalem, while 
he was praying in the temple, he was in a trance, and 
saw the Lord saying unto him, "Depart, for I will send 
thee far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts xxii. 21). Still 
later the Holy Ghost said unto certain prophets and 
teachers at Antioch, "as they ministered to the Lord and 
fasted," "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work 
whereunto I have called them." Paul knew his kind of 
work in general. It had been particularly and miracu- 
lously designated to him. He had, also, specific and par- 
ticular directions at times about definite portions of his 
work. He could have no shadow of doubt as to what his 
work was, in general, according to God's revealed will. 
Often he had as little ground for doubt about portions 
of that work. 

Thus' the moral law, and the nature of the disciple- 
ship, and the expressed designation in a miraculous way, 
laid the obligation on Paul to give the Gospel to all men, 
as God might enable him. 

n. Let us note the zvay in which Paul responded to 
the call of duty which rested on him. 

He preached the Gospel over a wide extent of terri- 



6o Introduction to Christian Missions 

tory. Stop with Paul a moment as he labors at Tarsus. 
Go with him to Antioch, as he makes his way thither 
upon the invitation of Barnabas. Abide with him there 
a whole year; see him meet with the Church and teach 
much people. Accompany him on his first missionary 
tour, through Cyprus, through Perga in Pamphylia, over 
the high passes of Mount Taurus with its snow-clad 
peaks and into the Pisidian Antioch, through Lystra, and 
and Derbe, back through all these again to great Antioch 
in Syria. Attend him on his second missionary tour, 
through Syria, through Asia Minor, across the Strait 
into Europe, to Philippi. Pass with him through Thes- 
salonica, through Berea, through Athens, through Cor- 
inth, and back three or four years later, by way of 
Ephesus, Caesarea and Jerusalem to the Syrian Antioch. 
Follow him on his third missionary tour, to Ephesus, 
where he fixes the center of his missionary operations for 
about three years ; then visit with him churches in Mace- 
donia and Achaia, and Corinth, whence he goes to Jeru- 
salem and to captivity by way of Philippi, Troas, Miletus, 
Tyre, and Caesarea. Go with him to Rome, whither 
he goes' bound, for though he is in chains, the Gospei 
is not bound, and he carries the Gospel with him, as he 
had felt he ought. Now, reflect that, after all, the Book 
of Acts gives us but a meagre account of the activity of 
Paul ; and that we have followed him only partially and 
cursorily through the account as given in that book. 
Surely Paul preached the Gospel over a wide field. His 
activity about the work of the Master was great. 

But if the field was wide, if his activity was great, 
his plans of work were no less wise and strategic. The 
principle of his working was that set forth in Acts i. 8. 
In whatever city we come upon Paul, we find him pur- 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 6i 

suing the tactics there enjoined. He is found preaching 
first to the Jews, next to the Samaritans, the Proselytes 
of the Gate, and next to the Gentiles. It being his duty 
to give the Gospel to all the world, and being limited as 
to time and place, he is found striking for the most 
strategic points — places where the Church, if set up, will 
be likely to maintain itself and spread. Thus we find 
him seeking the centres of trade, commerce and travel, 
whence the news of the new and wonderful religion 
which he preaches will spread ; passing by the proud and 
haughty university city of Athens with little effort and 
giving himself to protracted labor amongst the plainer 
and more unsophisticated but wide-awake, active-minded 
and intelligent populations of such live centres as Anti- 
och, Corinth and Ephesus. 

Paul did not scratch the ground simply. He preached 
the Gospel in its fullness, — the glorious Gospel of the 
blessed God, the Gospel, to an utterly and hopelessly lost 
and ruined world, of a triune God with a boundless love 
and grace to this lost world, the Father electing his own, 
the Son incarnating and humiliating himself to death 
that he might redeem them from the curse of the law, 
the Spirit quickening them, — one and all making it the 
Divine concern to render efficacious the truth which he 
preached and lived. He preached the Gospel uneviscer- 
ated, — miracles and all; he preached it leaning on the 
Spirit who only makes it fruitful, and he so preached 
that in many important centres great multitudes believed. 
We cannot follow him from place to place showing how 
thoroughly his work was done, in detail; but let us take 
his work at Ephesus as an example. 

Let us go there in A. D. 45, before Paul had begun 
his work in that place. Let us visit the great temple of 



62 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Diana, one of the most splendid temples of the ancient 
world, — one of the wonders of that world. Fix your 
mind not on the temple itself, as an architectural tri- 
umph ; not on the spacious lofty colonnades, thrilling the 
beholder with their beauty; but on the purpose of that 
temple. It is the temple not of the chaste huntress of 
the West, but of the Eastern Diana. Nor is the many- 
breasted Diana the only object of worship. There are 
images everywhere, images of divers kinds. The temple 
of Diana is a sort of pantheon. God's many are wor- 
shiped there. The temple is thronged with worshipers; 
and there is not a cult among them all that does not de- 
grade. Walk about the streets of Ephesus in the year 
45. See signs everywhere of corruption. See particu- 
larly how given to magic the people are. The Greeks 
practice magic; and even the Jews, so laden is the very 
atmosphere with it, practice magic. Go into the homes; 
see the idolatry and the fruits of idolatry in them, — the 
fruits of the boasted Graeco-Roman civilization. You 
see a vast multitude of homes where the husband does 
not love his wife, and the wife does not honor the hus- 
band, where parents care not for their children and chil- 
dren are wanting in respect for their parents; where 
the servants are merely eye-servants, and the masters 
and mistresses are heartless tyrants. Such were many 
of the homes in Ephesus in 45. Such were most of them 
perhaps. They were places without pure love, places 
often without natural affection, places without virtue. 

Now, let the twelve years pass : return to Ephesus in 
the year 57. Visit the temple of Diana and see a dim- 
inished throng of worshipers. Visit the streets and see 
there signs of improved citizenship. Stop, however, be- 
side the shrine-makers' shops ; remark the fact that these 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 63 

men have a dangerous look on their faces; hear their 
talk. They are mightily aroused against one Paul. One 
of these men says to his fellows something like this: 
"Men, ye know that by making shrines for Diana we have 
our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear, that not alone 
at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath 
persuaded and turned away much people, saying that 
there be no gods which are made with hands; so that 
not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, 
but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana 
should be despised and her magnificence should be de- 
stroyed whom all Asia and the world worshipeth." 

Go further; visit an humble house. It may be a 
private dwelling or a little hall once used as a synagogue, 
or as the room of some teacher of rhetoric, or philosophy, 
to hold his classes in. See not only the usual signs of 
humble, fervent, Christian worship; but a striking inci- 
dent to our eyes in this day's worship. Certain persons 
come forward and confess to the practice of magic. They 
bring parchments, papyri, and rolls, covered with mystic 
symbols. These have been their prized possessions. In 
some cases they represent bread to their owners. They 
had been making their livings by the use of these books. 
But now they make a fire of them. They burn them in 
the presence of all men. Hear the members of the 
Church remark to one another as they scatter to their 
homes. : Such books— books' of magic — have been 
burned by our people to the value of 50,000 pieces of 
silver. Go with some of these Christians to their home. 
Rest there, for their home is getting to be a good place 
to rest in. It is a pure place, a sweet place. The husband 
loves' his wife. He is willing to give himself for his 
wife. The wife honors her husband. The children rever- 



64 Introduction to Christian Missions 

ence and obey their parents. The parents provoke not 
their children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture 
and admonitions of the Lord. Read the nineteenth chap- 
ter of Acts, you will see that such results followed upon 
Paul's preaching; and you may infer with certainty that 
Paul was doing all his work with thoroughness. 

He does' this work in the face of huge obstacles, and 
bitter persecuting opposition. Five times he received 
forty stripes save one; thrice was he beaten with rods; 
once was he stoned; thrice did he suffer shipwreck; he 
was in journeyings oft, in perils of waters', in perils of 
robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by 
the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder- 
ness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, 
in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. 

Not only so but he gave himself incessantly to fortify- 
ing the work done. Upon him daily was the care of all 
the Churches'. He could say, "Who is weak and I am 
not weak? Who is offended and I burn not?" His 
epistles were all written to help rectify and build up 
Christians already won. The busiest missionary, evan- 
gelist and organizer of the apostolic age was the most 
prolific writer. To the Roman Christians' he wrote to 
give them in systematic form the great scheme of sal- 
vation by grace and to show them how to live in accord 
with it. To the Corinthians he wrote, to help them on 
various doctrinal questions, particularly to crush an ugly 
tendency to sectarianism, there being Petrine and Pauline 
parties in the Corinthian Church; and to enlighten them 
on many practical questions', — the relations of the sexes, 
the proprieties of worship, the way to observe the Lord's 
supper, etc. To the Galatians he wrote, to bring them 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 65 

back from an effort to rehabilitate salvation by law, by 
external observances, to salvation by grace. 

Paul so responded to his obligation to give the world 
the Gospel, that his work was abiding. He so firmly 
established the Church under the good hand of God that 
it lived and propagated itself in the centres in which he 
labored. Go to Asia Minor A. D. 107. Paul has been 
dead a good two-score years. He had done his great 
work there more than fifty years ago. We can look over 
the shoulder of Pliny, the Roman ruler of the region, 
and read a letter which he is writing to the Emperor 
Trajan. Pliny wishes to know what to do with the 
Christians. He writes that "that superstition," as he 
calls Christianity, is spreading not only in cities but in 
villages and even in the country, that it captivates all 
classes, all ages, and both sexes. He declares that the 
temples of the gods are almost forsaken, and that there 
is hardly any sale for sacrificial victims'. He says that 
he is trying to stop its progress; that he has condemned 
some to death, and that he has sent others to the imperial 
tribunal. He writes that he can find nothing against these 
men and women except that they worship Christ as God. 
He even writes that they pledge themselves by an oath 
not to do any evil work, to commit no theft nor adultry, 
not to break their word, nor to sacrifice property en- 
trusted to them. That work of Paul was still bearing 
fruit under the good hand of God in 107. And is it 
not bearing fruit to-day ? Are we not his' off-spring, and 
the off-spring of his helpers in that work down to this 
day? 

Surely Paul acquitted himself well of his responsi- 
bilities as called to give the Gospel to all classes of 
peoples. He preached over a wide extent of territory. 



66 Introduction to Christian Missions 

He pursued wise tactics, preaching in order to Jews, 
proselytes of the gate, and Gentiles. He planned his 
work so as to make it count for the most, looking out 
strategic points and planting churches in them which 
would take all the contiguous territory. He so preached 
as to have much fruit in the lives of his spiritual children. 
He preached a full and saving gospel. He so preached 
as to secure great and efficient growth of the Church. 
He did his work in the face of tremendous difficulties'. 
He did his work so solidly that it was not evanescent but 
permanent. Good ground had he for saying, late in life, 
so far as this aspect of his course is concerned, "I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course." 

in. Let us ask whether a like obligation to that 
which rested on Paul does not rest on you, my brethren. 

We maintain that a like obligation does rest on you. 
As certainly as you are a man, so certain is it that the 
obligation to love your neighbor as yourself, to be your 
brother's keeper, rests upon you, even apart from its 
special injunction in the Decalogue. Moreover, as cer- 
tainly as you are a man, so certain is it that the second 
table of the Decalog'ue binds you to love your neighbor 
as yourself. The only way of escaping the force of this 
contention is to show that you are irrational and irre- 
sponsible, like the beasts of the field, incapable of regard- 
ing yourself as God's man by right of creation and pre- 
servation, and bound to serve him and his creatures. 
Thus you are under an obligation to be missionary. 

Again, you are members of the Church of Christ, 
which he ordered in his farewell address, to carry the 
Gospel to every creature. This obligation is laid by him 
on the Church, on the body in covenant with him by bap- 
tism. This covenant involving the doctrine that, what- 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 67 

soever a man's special calling may be, he shall regard 
the great end of his life as that of discipling all nations 
and edifying the body of Christ. He may be a porter 
in a Church as poor as that of Philippi, he must try to 
do his part in pushing the cause of Christ to the utter- 
most bounds of the earth. If Providence favors and 
he can do more to forward the cause of Christ by becom- 
ing an embassador of the cross; he is under obligation, — > 
an imperative obligation — to emulate Paul's work as to 
the very form of his life's effort. 

Christians are left to-day to their own, and to the 
sanctified, judgment of the Church (the Spirit working 
through them) as to the special forms of effort which 
they shall give their lives to, in carrying out the great 
command of the head of the Church, to impart the Gos- 
pel to all the world. But the obligation is upon them — 
upon them, upon you, gentlemen, as really as it was on 
the Apostle to the Gentiles. It may be noted, by the 
way, that according the the Protestant theory of the 
ministry, that which is an official duty of the officer of 
the Church has its analogous duty resting on the private 
member. This burden is, therefore on every private 
member. 

Nay, it is' upon many unbelievers as well. Their un- 
belief does not free them from the obligation to seek the 
true welfare of their fellowmen. Their refusal to let 
Jesus reign over them does not absolve them from the 
responsibility of letting him reign over them; nor from 
the responsibility of doing their work of giving the great 
riches' of the Gospel, which he offers them, to their 
fellow-men. 

No man who has ever had the Gospel offered him 
can show himself exempt from the obligation to 



68 Introduction to Christian Missions 

share it with others according to his abilities and 
opportunities. 

It should be remarked, further, that the obligation to 
missionary effort lies with very peculiar force on our 
age: The opportunities are so vast. The doors of 
heathen nations are so wide open. The peoples in many 
of these nations are showing such unusual readiness' to 
hear the Gospel. The relations between Protestant Chris- 
tion peoples and these heathen are so intimate. The 
resources and instrumentalities of Christian peoples are 
so vast; think of their railways, steamships, telegraph 
lines, etc. Think how they can protect missionary work- 
ers as never before. Think of all the rich increment 
given to Christian civilization in the nineteenth century. 
This limitless range of opportunity, these measureless' 
resources, place an obligation on you, my brethren, and 
on your fellow Christians of to-day which is absolutely 
imperative. 

IV. Let us ask how are Christians of to-day measur- 
ing up to this ohligation to give the Gospel to all men. 

It is a boast of the Church of our age that it is a 
missionary Church. It is contrasted with other ages of 
the Church to their disadvantage. And it must be ad- 
mitted gratefully that relatively ours' is a missionary age ; 
that the Church has responded with a degree of earnest- 
ness to its exceptional opportunities; but is it awake yet 
to its responsibilities? Is it showing the Pauline spirit 
in regard to this' great problem and duty? Is it striving 
to preach the Gospel first in Jerusalem and in all Judea, 
and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth? 
Are energy enough and force enough being used ? Is the 
the work done on the best plans, so as to count for the 
most? Is the Church with the eye of the true strategist or- 



Paul's Obligation to Missions 69 

ganizing new bodies in centres where they will maintain 
themselves and take the contiguous territory for Christ ? Is' 
there the fearless proclamation of the whole Gospel? Is 
the preaching so done as to bring forth much fruit in 
the lives of the converts? Are the leaders of the Church 
adequate to leading the Church in this work? Are they 
trying to become so? Are the rank and file of the 
Church lifting themselves in intelligence about missions 
so as to be able to judge of the competence of their lead- 
ers? Is' there adequate self-sacrifice in behalf of the 
cause? Are those fit in other respects to go, ready to 
go? Are parents ready to devote their children to the 
cause to the extent they should be? 

Not all of these questions can be answered in the 
affirmative. May the gracious Lord help his Church of 
to-day to give itself anew to Christ, that it may inquire 
with Saul of Tarsus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me 
to do?" May He make us ready to give the Gospel to 
the Greek and to the Barbarian, to the wise and to the 
unwise ; and all to the praise of the glory of his grace ! 
Amen. 



LECTURE IV. 

Christian Missions from igo to 590. 

Nestorian Missions. 

In the first lecture we saw that the Church is 
the God-ordained missionary society; that every 
Church member, in virtue of his membership in the 
Church, is pledged to missionary endeavor; and under 
imperative moral obligations to be missionary in spirit 
and effort whether he actually go and preach after the 
manner of the Apostle Paul, go and live Christianity, 
talking it as well as he can, as the obscure Christians 
who founded the Church of Rome before ever an 
Apostle had set foot within the city, or whether he 
support the missionary who does go, as the Philippians 
who supplied the needs of the missionary Paul. He 
is missionary as a member of the body of Christ; and 
to push the cause of missions he ought. 

In the second lecture we tried to set forth the re- 
vealed principle properly regulative of the Church's 
missionary effort, and at the same time to bring out 
the principles implied in that chief one, all of which 
underlay and gave shape to the missionary work of 
the Church in the Apostolic age. 

In the third lecture we took up the great apostolic 
missionary Paul, examined his sense of the obligations 
on him to be missionary, the manner in which he met 
his obligations; and the similar obligations resting on 
the Church and its members in every subsequent age. 

Could we allow ourselves, in this series, the privi- 



Patristic Missions 71 

lege of indulging the imagination, or could we build 
on legend, we might have taken as the subject of the 
fourth lecture, the missionary operations of the other 
disciples in the apostolic age. But, except concerning 
the work of Peter and John and Paul's assistants re- 
liable history has recorded little. Luke makes indeed 
a pregnant, if brief record, "They that were scattered 
abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Nor 
should such an intimation of truth be ignored. The 
service rendered by believers, too inconspicuous to 
send down their names in history, and who severally 
organized few churches ; or, in many cases, only one, 
were necessary in order to the grand success of the 
mission cause in the apostolic age. "Could we learn 
more fully the facts of the apostolic age we should un- 
doubtedly find that it led all the succeeding ages in 
the vigor of its individual effort. It was not a time of 
great leaders but of many leaders . . . There 
was a constantly increasing number of individual 
Christian believers, who, wherever they went, whether 
on their regular business or driven by persecution, 
preached Christ, and Him crucified, told the story of 
the cross, bore witness to its value for themselves, and 
urged the acceptance of the Saviour on those with 
whom they came in contact. Of missionaries in the 
modern sense of the term there were few ; of those who 
devoted their full time and strength to the work of 
preaching there were few; but of those who made their 
trade, their profession, their every day occupation, of 
whatever sort, the means of extending their faith, there 
was a multitude." * 

* E. M. Bliss, A Concise History of Missions, p. 16. 



y2 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Our historical knowledge of the work of the Apos- 
tolic Church being so compendious, we turn, to the 
course of missionary history subsequent to the apos- 
tolic age. In our treatment of this history we shall 
attempt not to reproduce it, but to set forth some of 
its important features, and developments; to compare 
its developments with New Testament principles, and 
to test them by their fruits. However humble the 
effort to study missionary history philosophically, if 
to any degree the philosophizing be sane and sober, 
it must eventuate in practical good, guarding us 
against error and anchoring us to the truth. Hence 
the character of this attempt. 

The long course of missionary history naturally 
falls into several divisions. In the study of these divi- 
sions of the missionary movement severally, we shall 
keep the following questions prominently before us: 
What was the theoretical grasp of Christianity prevail- 
ing in the period and determining the character of the 
missionary effort? What was' the prevailing mission- 
ary aim? What respect did the workers pay to the 
principles set forth in the Acts of the Apostles to regu- 
late the mission effort of the Church? What instru- 
mentalities did they use in their work? What methods 
did they employ? The great missionaries of the 
period? The common missionaries of the period? 
The numbers won? Their character? The territory 
overrun ? 

So much for the plan to be followed ; now let us 
to the handling of Christian Missions from loo to 590; 
and as the year 311 was epochal in the missionary 
movement as in other branches of Church history, 
dividing the movement into two periods, each having 



Patristic Missions 73 

markedly distinguishing features, let us take up first 
the period 100 to 311, the sub-apostolic and ante-Nicene 
age. 

The theoretical grasp of Christianity which pre- 
vailed during this period was substantially like that of 
the apostolic age. Various heretical teachers, anti- 
Trinitarian, Gnostic, Montanistic, arose; but the anti- 
Trinitarians and Gnostics were excluded from the 
Church, and won after all, only small bodies of fol- 
lowers. The Montanists, whose false teachings struck 
less at that which is essential in Christianity than 
the others, were quite as much schismatics as heretics. 
Certain false practices, and subsequently the false 
theories back of them, of the Gnostics and Mani- 
chaeans, were indeed to creep surely, if slowly, into 
the Church. But their influence is to be seen rather 
in the periods following 311 than in the one now be- 
fore us. In the thought of some Christians evangeli- 
cal repentance was being substituted by penance ; 
godly sorrorw with endeavor after new obedience, by 
an effort to render satisfaction for sin, by confession, 
sighs and tears and sackcloth, which is to say, that in 
the thought of some work, righteousness was begin- 
ning to creep in. Belief in the magical power of water 
baptism was also creeping in, — the belief that in bap- 
tism, if the person baptized be not in mortal sin un- 
repented of, and oppose no bar of his own will, he is 
washed free of guilt by the Holy Ghost, in virtue of a 
connection between the water and the Spirit. Vagueness 
of conception and looseness of doctrinal grasp were 
the general characteristics of Christians. Neverthe- 
less, in the main, a sound, if unscientific view prevailed 
of man's hopeless condition if left to himself, and of 



74 Introduction to Christian Missions 

salvation by the gracious work of the triune God. 
Men magnified the power of a living faith in *he risen 
Lord. They longed to see this faith universal. They 
believed, however, that Paul may plant and ApoUos 
may water but that God alone must give the increase. 

Naturally the aim of a Church, with such a faith, 
in its missionary work was much like that of the 
Apostolic Church. It too sought to win true believers 
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It sought in addition, men 
so possessed of the Christian faith and the Christian 
spirit that they would declare their testimony in the 
face of all persecution even unto death. This period 
is the classic age of the Church under oppression. 
The ancient heathen priesthoods, the imperial power 
and the animosity against God natural to man's heart, 
were pitted unitedly against Christianity. Throughout 
most of the periods, persecution was waging in some 
quarter or other of the empire against Christians. 
Sometimes the persecutions were widespread. This 
bitter opposition and the probability that the new 
convert would soon have to face the fires of persecution 
made the Church prevalently desire only those who 
were believed to be thoroughly devoted to Christ. 
The persecutions helped to prevent the Church from 
desiring merely nominal converts ; and thus bolstered 
up the motives springing from an intelligent appre- 
hension of the true genius of Christianity. Thus it 
aimed to secure true witnesses for Christ and his 
cause. 

It cannot be safely asserted that there was much 
consciously strategic planning of the work in any large 
way, but there was some of it as will appear in the 
sequel. As for the immediate mission work of the 



Patristic Missions 75 

rank and file, it was well directed, terminating upon 
the people with whom the Christians severally came 
into the closest contact. Within the limits fixed by 
their poverty, and their mental cultivation and intel- 
lectual grasp, they, in practice, applied well the prin- 
ciples laid down in the New Testament for the Church's 
guidance in its efforts to spread the faith. 

The word of God, in the Old Testament, and in 
such books of the New Testament, as circulated in 
any particular quarter of the^ Church; and this word 
as preserved in tradition, was the one instrument in 
general use. That word, preached, privately taught 
and lived by the disciples, was used by the propagators 
of the faith with absolute confidence. There was some 
use made, by learned teachers, here and there of 
heathen utterances, but in such a bird's-eye view as 
we are taking, this is hardly to be noticed. The word 
of God was universally regarded and applied by the 
Christians of the time as the effective instrument. 

As to the methods employed in this period : The 
evangelistic was the chief method. Ministers preached 
the glad tidings. The Christian men and women 
severally talked and lived the glad tidings. 

The literary method also was employed extensively 
as proven beyond a peradventure, by the translations 
of Scriptures which have come down to us from that 
early age. Amongst these are the Peshito and Cure- 
tonian Syriac versions for Syria and Mesopotamia; 
the Memphitic, Thebaic, and Bashmuric for Egypt and 
the Upper Nile Valley ; the North African and Italian- 
Latin versions for Carthage and Rome, Copies of the 
Scriptures were multiplied in the Greek which pre- 
vailed so widely. The literary method in missionary 



76 Introduction to Christian Missions 

endeavor was applied in the production of letters, ex- 
positions of the faith, pleas for the faith, defenses of 
the faith, the "Apologies," etc. It is perhaps not far- 
fetched to say that in Alexandria we see an instance 
of the educational method in missions, in the catecheti- 
cal school, which, at the outset, was a school in which 
inquirers and neophytes were taught the simplest ele- 
ments of the Gospel, but which was soon developed 
into a college of divinity and evangelistic work, and 
in which Christians were trained to meet the repre- 
sentatives of the heathen systems. This school be- 
came an important source of mission workers. Other 
methods may have been employed but the evidence that 
they were is not conspicuous. 

There were some missionary workers prominent 
enough to leave their names dimly written on the 
pages of history. No one of them stands out as Paul's 
in the preceding age, or as the name of Patrick, or 
Columba, or Augustine in the next period. Of these, 
one was Pantaenus. He was the first teacher of the 
catechetical school of Alexandria whose name has 
come down to us. He is sometimes represented as the 
founder of that school. Previous to his conversion he 
had been a Stoic philosopher. He was highly esteemed 
for his services to Christianity by his contemporaries. 
Eusebius asserts that "Pantaenus is said to have showed 
such a willing mind towards the publishing of the doc- 
trine of Christ that he became a preacher of the Gospel 
unto the Eastern Gentiles, and was sent as far as India. 
For there were", continues Eusebius, and for what fol- 
lows he vouches, "there were then many evangelists 
prepared for this purpose, to promote and plant the 
heavenly word with godly zeal, after the guise of the 



Patristic Missions ^7 

apostles. Of these Pantaenus being one, is said to have 
come into India, where he found the Gospel of Mat- 
thew written in the Hebrew tongue, kept of such as 
knew Christ, which was preached there before his com- 
ing by Bartholomew, one of the apostles, and as they 
report revered there unto this day."* 

Whether by India was meant the peninsula now 
known by that name, or Ethiopia, or the Upper Nile 
country, or Arabia Felix, is uncertain; but it is not a 
matter of importance in this connection. The uncer- 
tainty does not touch the fact that Pantaenus and 
**many evangelists" were going out to missionary work. 

According to the French historian, Gregory of 
Tours, seven missionaries came into as many quarters 
of France about 250, and founded churches. One of 
these was Dionysius, the first bishop of the community 
where now is Paris. According to Gregory's account, 
Dionysius suffered death at his mission post dur- 
ing the Aurelian persecution. Another of the seven 
was Saturnin, one of the most famous missionaries and 
martyrs of the third century. He is represented to 
have been a native of Italy; to have been sent as a 
missionary to Gaul by the bishop Fabian ; to have set- 
tled at Toulouse ; to have labored with much success, 
and to have been killed by an infuriated mob between 
250 and 260. 

Other names might be laboriously transcribed, but 
little besides, of these ancient missionaries ; unless we 
should take as essentially missionary such a man as 
Irenaeus of Lyons. The accounts of their labors have 
perished ; but Eusebius's reference to the " 'many evan- 
gelists' of Pantaenus's day prepared to promote, and 

* Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book V., Chapter IX. 



78 Introduction to Christian Missions 

to plant the heavenly word with godly zeal after the 
guise of the apostles", shows that not a few gave them- 
selves up wholly to propagating Christianity. While 
remote cities and countries received some of these 
workers, the villages and towns within the immediate 
influence of the more important cities which previously 
had been made centres of Christianity, received a still 
greater number of them. Origin informs us that city 
churches sent their missionaries to the neighboring vil- 
lages in his day.* 

But the mass of the missionary work of the period 
was done by humble Christians who had no official title 
in the Church, and whose names have been lost utterly 
to the memory of man, though treasured in the Lamb's 
Book of Life. The Church grew so because the rank 
and file were possessed with the missionary spirit. 
Almost every Christian believer was a missionary and 
was aflame with love for Christ and with zeal for His 
cause. Justin Martyr meets' a venerable old man walk- 
ing on the sea-shore. They fall to talking. Justin is 
converted to Christ and becomes a valued defender and 
propagator of Christianity. "Every Christian laborer," 
says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests him, 
though Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the 
Creator, and difficult when he is found, to make him 
known to all." 

Celsus jeered at Christianity, because he saw in 
mechanics, rustic and ignorant persons, its earnest 
propagators.! The people were full of it — as full as 
shipwrecked sailors are of the story of their rescue. 
They loved to talk of it; and did talk of it. The mer- 

* Compare Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 
Vol. II., p. 21. 



Patristic Missions 79 

chant traders talked of it on their travels ; the soldiers 
on their marches and beside their camp fires. Neigh- 
bor talked of it to neighbor, father to son and to 
daughter and to wife and to servant ; the parents talked 
of it to their children, and the children talked of it 
to their parents. Slaves talked of it to their fellow- 
slaves and to their masters and mistresses. No mat- 
ter how humble a man might be, the possession of 
Christianity gave him a subject of such worth that 
on it he could speak to the greatest. It was the very- 
greatest thing that had ever come into the life of man. 
It sweetened all life, however sordid otherwise ; it had 
robbed death of its sting. The very martyrs at the 
stake sang it, prayed it, talked it, lived it, gloried in 
it, rejoiced in dying for it. The Christian rank and 
file, busied in their various occupations, called in ques- 
tion by the civil authorities for practicing a new re- 
ligion, in dungeons, at the stake — were the most effec- 
tive agents in the spread of Christianity in the ante- 
Nicene period. Oh, for a revival of this irrepressibly 
aggressive type of Christianity among oua* rank and file 
of Christians. 

The number of Christians increased with very great 
rapidity throughout the period. According to conser- 
vative estimates, at the close of the apostolic age, the 
number of adherents to Christianity had not reached 
five hundred thousand. At the accession of Constan- 
tine the Christians numbered ten to twelve millions. 
To put the matter in another way: At the death of the 
apostle John, only one man in two hundred and forty 
within the limits of the Roman Empire was a profess- 
ing Christian, whereas on the adoption of Christianity 
by Constantine as the religion of State, about every 



8o Introduction to Christian Missions 

tenth or twelfth man in the Empire was a nominal 
Christian. 

The missionary triumphs of Christianity were a mat- 
ter which thrilled the early apologists. About the mid- 
dle of the second century Justin Martyr asserts that 
there is "no race of men, whether of Barbarians or of 
Greeks, or bearing any other name, either because they 
lived in wagons without fixed habitation, or in tents 
leading a pastoral life, among whom prayers and 
thanksgivings were not offered up to the Father and 
Creator of all things through the name of the crucified 
Jesus." About 200, TertuUian says in his address to 
the heathen: "We are a people of yesterday, and yet 
we have filled every place belonging to you — cities, 
islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, 
your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We 
leave you your temples only. We can count your 
armies, our numbers in a single province will be 
greater." 

The rapid and healthful growth of the Church in 
this period is an undisputed fact. In the first three 
hundred years of its growth it won a good tenth of the 
population of the Empire, and it so impressed some of 
the leading statesmen of the times that they naturally 
looked to its adoption as the state religion. 

The territory overrun by the Christians had grown, 
less fast than the number of Christians but still very 
fast. Christian communities were found, by the close 
of this period, on the East, in Mesopotamia, Persia, 
Media, Parthia, and Bactria, and even in remote India ; to 
the southward, having gained a strong foothold in Egypt, 
the Church extended up the Nile to Nubia and Abys- 
sinia. It flourished greatly in North Africa. It was 



Patristic Missions 8i 

planted and had made a large growth in Gaul, Spain 
and Britain before the end of the period. Christians 
had crossed the Rhine and made converts among the 
German Barbarians before the era of Constantine. The 
mission spirit of the Church was splendid. The Church 
of the time was not rich in this world's goods. It was 
poor and oppressed. It included no large percentage 
of the learned and the great. In some respects it was 
still the Church's day of small things ; but the believers 
generally took it as their great business to witness for 
Jesus. The blessing of God rested on this witnessing. 
The Gospel was carried throughout the civilized world 
of the day — the limits of the Roman empire ; and be- 
yond its bounds. 

Let us now review rapidly the missionary life of 
the next period, the period 311 to 590, the Nicene and 
post-Nicene age of the Church. 

I. The theoretical view of Christianity which pre- 
vailed early in the period was different in important 
respects from that which prevailed in the preceding 
and in the apostolic age. Certain evil germs planted 
in the Church in the period just left, some of them 
sown by heretics who had themselves suffered excom- 
munication, had flourished and brought forth much 
fruit of their kind. In the eyes of the Church at large, 
human works were assuming a large place as over 
against divine grace ; the highest human holiness was 
regarded as dependent largely on human works, and 
human works of an ascetic character ; the symbolic nature 
of baptism was obscured and, in the eyes of most, the 
ordinance was perverted into a magical rite. It came 
to be believed universally that, if he who administered 
baptism did it with proper intention, and if he who re- 



82 Introduction to Christian Missions 

ceived it, did not determine that he would not receive 
its virtue and if he was not in mortal sin, such as 
adultery or murder, unrepented of, his soul would be 
washed white and clean from guilt, and his character 
would be in the same instant miraculously strengthened 
for the good. That is to say, the theory of baptismal 
regeneration prevailed almost universally. The doc- 
trine of the Christian ministry was rapidly changing, 
giving in the place of the New Testament minister 
a priest, with prerogatives over against the private 
members of the Churches like those enjoyed by heathen 
and by Jewish priests. The idea of the universal 
spiritual priesthood of all believers passed away to be 
resurrected only at the Reformation. Churchly functions 
once exercised by the people at large or by chosen 
officers, were regarded as of right to be exercised by 
th-e special priesthood only. The theory of ex operato 
efficiency of the sacraments generally, in the hands of 
the special priesthood, came into vogue. 

The growth of the evil seeds planted in a better 
age was favored by the rapid movement of current 
events which swept Christianity from the condition of 
a persecuted religion into the saddle as the religion 
of the state. This great change in the external con- 
dition of the Church, intoxicated and secularized it. 
Unconsciously perhaps, but nevertheless truly, it fur- 
ther changed its very theoretical grasp of itself to suit 
the demands of its new formal ally the state. 

II. As to the aim which inspired the missionary of 
this period : While not wholly unlike that of the apos- 
tolic age, it was largely unlike it. The aim of the mis- 
sionaries in the period was more and more to gather 
in the nominal Christians without much concern as to 



Patristic Missions 83 

whether they were true believers or not. This change 
in the aim came in part at least from the change in 
the theoretical grasp of the Christian system. Believ- 
ing that men, not in mortal sin unrepented of, and not 
opposing a volition against receiving good from the 
rite, would be cleansed of all guilt by baptism, and re- 
newed in heart; believing that should these baptized 
fall into sin again, there were other ordinances in the 
hands of the special priests with which they could be 
efficiently restored; and believing that baptism was 
necessary to salvation, they became exceedingly de- 
sirous not to win spiritual believers, but to get men 
under the sacramental manipulations of the priests, 
to make them the subjects of baptism, penance, etc., 
etc. Thinking that the application of the sacraments 
was essential to the salvation of any individual, they 
laid themselves out to secure that application. Pos- 
sessed of a legalistic, external, priestly and magical 
conception of Christianity, the missionaries were satis- 
fied with conformity to Christian customs and recep- 
tion of the Christian sacraments. They sought in their 
converts not for an effective addition to the army of 
witness-bearers. They wished to save units. The 
clergy would bear the witness. They wished to get 
the people within the sphere within which the sacra- 
ments worked, that they might be hoisted heaven- 
ward. 

III. As little attention was paid to the New Testa- 
ment missionary aim by the mission workers of this 
age, so little attention was paid to the New Testa- 
ment principles for regulating missionary endeavor. 
There was little strategic planning of such a sort as to 
impress itself on the mind of man, save in the efforts 



84 Introduction to Christian Missions 

constantly made to get the hands of the priests first 
on the heads of the leaders of such tribes as the repre- 
sentatives of the cross came in contact with. The 
Church had put her meddling hand on so many features 
of apostolic teaching in the effort to improve them, that 
the principles of the propagation of the Gospel current 
in the apostolic age had been largely lost to view. An 
occasional Christian, indeed, held pretty closely to the 
principles of the preceding ages ; and bits of work here 
and there were conducted in the old way. But such 
worker was the exception. 

IV. The word was no longer the sole instrument in 
general use by the missionaries. Bribery in veiled or 
open form, was in frequent, almost common use. Con- 
stantine the Great seems to have practiced it openly. 
His example would be largely followed in his own day. 
Evidence is not wanting that the great Church dig- 
nitaries used similar means to forward ecclesiastical 
interests including conversions. The Emperors gen- 
erally, showed more favor to Christians than to pagans. 
There were popular outbursts against not only the 
grosser and more impious heathen cults, but against 
the heathen cults generally. The physical sword as 
well as the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of 
God, was used. Ad hominem attacks on the heathen re- 
ligions and every other weapon deemed likely to prove 
effective were, on occasions, put into use; it having 
come to be the belief of the age — a belief in which even 
the great Augustine concurred — that it was the duty of 
the Christians to compel men to come into the Church 
even at the cost of using physical force. 

V. As to the methods employed by the propagators 
of the Gospel during the period 311 to 590: 



Patristic Missions 85 

1st. The evengelistic method was used. That is, 
some lived and preached an evangel. But the Gospel 
was presented in an increasingly paganized form. The 
missionaries rarely carried the pure Gospel. By their 
interpretation and traditions they gave the Gospel sac- 
ramental external, legalistic and ascetic overlardings, 
They mixed with it not a little of revamped heathenism. 

2nd. They used the medical arm often, having 
larger knowledge of the crude healing art of the time 
than the peoples amongst whom they labored. Not 
infrequently they claimed to use miraculous power to 
heal ; and seem often to have befooled a credulous peo- 
ple, counting it proper to deceive if thereby they could 
add to the praise and reputation of the Church. 

3rd. The Hterary method was in use. Ulfilas for 
example, gave to the Goths the Scriptures in their own 
tongue. Miesrob gave the Armenians a Bible in their ovrn 
tongue. Jerome gave the Latin speaking peoples a 
more perfect translation than they had hitherto en- 
joyed, in the Vulgate. Commentaries, expositions, 
apologies, polemical treatises, and religious works of 
various worthy kinds were produced ; legends of saints, 
angels, and wonder-working relics, intended to ad- 
vance the worship of those creatures, were multiplied, 
and became the most popular literature of the age. 

4th. The educational method was little practiced. 
In the East, the catechetical and theological school 
previously established at Alexandria was kept up dur- 
ing the earlier portion of this period. A similar 
school flourished during a portion of the period at 
Antioch; later another at Edessa; and another at Nisi-. 
bis. In these schools preparation for the ministry be- 
came the uppermost aim. In the West there were 



86 Introduction to Christian Missions 

smaller dioscean seminaries whose purpose was the 
same. There was no adequate stress placed on teach- 
ing as a method of Gospel propagation. The current 
civilization was becoming effete and at the same time 
was being swept away by the flood of incoming Bar- 
barians. The time did not favor education; the very 
bishop, presbyters, missionaries had little of it as a 
rule; the changed conception of the ministry, substi- 
tuting for the heralds of the Gospel the priest with 
magical power made education of the clergy seem re- 
latively unnecessary; and much more, education of 
the people unnecessary from a merely religious point 
of view. 

5th. In applying the instruments of bribery and 
the physical sword almost any method was practiced 
that appeared to promise success. The churchmen 
aimed to win the strong man — the man in civil and 
military position — to their view. They frequently lett 
it to his arbitrary will to choose the way in which he 
would herd those under him to the baptismal fount 
and to the priestly hand. 

VI. Some of the more distinguished mission- 
workers of the time were Ulfilas amongst the Goths; 
Gregory and Miesrob amongst the Armenians, whose 
labors resulted in quite a general spread of Christianity 
in Armenia; Frumentius and Edesius in Abyssinia; 
humble, simple hearted, self-sacrificing and efficient 
Patrick in Ireland, and Columba in Scotland. Stories 
have come down showing that here and there the old 
ideals had not utterly perished ; and that an occasional 
earnest child of God by a godly walk and conversation 
turned the minds of neighbors to Christ. 

The chief mission work of this period was home 



Patristic Missions 87 

mission work. Every considerable section of the em- 
pire had been penetrated by Christianity as early as 
311; but not over one-tenth perhaps of the population 
had become adherents thereto, at that date. In the 
period beginning with the union of Church and state, 
the other nine-tenth remained to be handled. The 
ministers of religion had, every one, abounding oppor- 
tunities for mission work. Nor is there reason for 
doubting that they had zeal of a sort; nor that they 
inducted vast numbers into the external religion into 
which they had so largely converted Christianity. 

VII. It is impossible even to conjecture the num- 
ber of adherents added. By 590 there had come a vast 
decrease in the population within the bounds of the 
once West Roman empire. Cities, towns and villages 
had been destroyed. The old population had been de- 
cimated over and over by successive waves of Barbar- 
ians, had suffered from the want of all things to the 
point of extinction in many quarters. 

The incomers had supplied their places only very 
partially at first, and had not multiplied rapidly owing 
to their ever-recurring wars on each other. In all 
Christendom there may have been thirty or thirty-five 
millions of adherents to the prevailing paganized Chris- 
tianity. Some have estimated the number of Chris- 
tians in 814 at thirty-five millions. This date is after 
the Roman missionizing of England under Augustine 
and his followers, after the work of Boniface and his 
co-laborers amongst the Germans, and after Charle- 
magne's work as a converter by force. But in 814, the 
Mohammedans had reduced the number of Christians 
in the East and in North Africa by as much as it had 
gained in the West between the years 590 and 814. 



88 Introduction to Christian Missions 

All things considered it is not probable that there were 
more Christians at the end of Charlemagne's reign 
than at the end of the papal reign of Gregory I. 

The adherents in this age were largely nominal and 
external Christians. The Church had largely divorced 
morals from religion. Paganization had meant secu- 
larization for the great mass. 

VIII. The territory within which Christianity pre- 
vailed had been considerably augmented by 590. Be- 
yond the ancient bounds of the Graeco-Roman empire, 
Christianity had overrun Abyssinia, made inroads into 
Arabia and Persia, overrun Armenia, made conquests 
to the north of the Danube and overrun Ireland, and 
portions of Scotland. 

The Nestorians showed considerable missionary 
activity not only in this but in the next period. As 
they separated from the Graeco-Latin Church prior to 
590, it is convenient to indicate at this point, once for 
all, their missionary career. Differing from the Graeco- 
Latin Church in denying that Mary was the mother of 
God, in repudiating the use of images and the doc- 
trines of purgatory and transubstantiation, and in 
holding a more simple worship, they were driven out 
of the bounds of the empire ; found an asylum in Per- 
sia, and were favored by Persian kings. 

They spread from Persia with great missionary 
zeal into Arabia, India, China and Tartary, establish- 
ing schools and hospitals and ennobling the civiliza- 
tions of the peoples amongst whom they labored. 

A certain Nestorian monk, Sergius, is supposed to 
have given Mohammed his imperfect knowledge of 
Christianity. The sect received many privileges at 
Mohammed's hands, and exerted an influence on 



Patristic Missions 89 

Arabian culture, and upon the development of science 
and philosophy amongst the Arabs. According to tradi- 
tion the Nestorians made converts among the Tartars 
in the eleventh century. They had previously spread 
into China. 

, The Nestorian Church in the thirteenth century 
was quite extensive. But persecution came upon them 
and they were crushed. They have maintained them- 
selves, however, in Armenia and in the wild mountains 
and valleys of Kurdistan and in India. 



LECTURE V. 

Mediaeval Catholic Missions, 590 to 15 17. 

In our previous study of the history of Christian 
missions', we have seen that, after the year 311, the 
Church as a whole more and more ceased to take any 
interest in the work; that the popular effort to spread 
Christianity, which had characterized the apostolic and 
ante-Nicene ages, stopped with the adoption of Christian- 
ity as the religion of the empire ; that such mission work 
as' was done was undertaken by those of the clergy that 
individually were moved thereto. We have seen that 
the aim of the mission workers, for the most part, was 
now to bring persons under priestly manipulations; that 
they were no longer careful to make the word of God 
their sole instrument in the work, but ready to use any- 
thing that came to hand, and to apply any method likely 
to be followed by success' in gathering nominal adherents 
to their religion. We have seen also that these differ- 
ences as to workers, and aim, and instruments used, and 
methods employed, were due to a change in the theoreti- 
cal grasp of Christianity; that the theory of Christianity 
obtaining in the apostolic and ante-Nicene ages had been 
replaced by the sacramental, legalistic, externalizing 
theory. 

We propose in thi^ lecture to review mediaeval mis- 
sions, raising, as heretofore promised in regard to them, 
the questions: What theory of Christianity conditioned 
them? What was the aim of the work? What was the 



Mediaeval Catholic Missions 91 

-respect paid to the principles embodied in the Acts for 
guidance of the Church in its missionary effort? What 
the instruments used? The methods employed? Who 
the workers? What the number won? What the terri- 
tory over-run? 

I. The theoretical grasp of Christianity handed over 
to the Mediaeval Church by the Church of the post- 
Nicene age has' been sufficiently described in Lecture IV. 
It must be added here that the Mediaeval Church, as a 
whole, not only did not improve on the grasp of Chris- 
tianity which it inherited, but made it more external, 
more legalistic, more sacramental, introduced more of 
paganism into it. There were, indeed, individuals, here 
and there, who saw more clearly some part of the system 
of genuine Christian truth; as Retramnus, in the ninth 
century, and Berenger, in the eleventh century, on the 
subject of the Lord's Supper; as Anselm, in the eleventh 
century, on the doctrine of the atonement; as WycHffe, 
in the fourteenth century, and John Huss in the fifteenth 
century, on many subjects; but these views were either 
condemned and persecuted, or ignored by the Church at 
large. While great progress in power to state scien- 
tifically the actual faith of the Church and real advance 
in the apprehension of certain teachings of Holy Scrip- 
ture was made by the schoolmen of the period, it must 
be admitted that the whole faith of the Church as stated 
by them, at its best, was more external, more legalistic, 
more sacramental, and more pagan than the faith of the 
fathers which the Mediaeval Church inherited in 590: 
Human works were given a larger place in the outwork- 
ing of redemption; more stress was put on the sacra- 
ments', their value and the theory of their ex opere 
operato efficiency; the value of a knowledge of the Holy 



92 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Scriptures was more belittled; the reality of a special 
priesthood, though absolutely false, was more generally, 
resolutely, accepted; the universal priesthood of believ- 
ers was put more in the background; salvation by free 
grace was more definitely and specifically denied; the 
false distinction between clergy and laity and the equally 
false distinction between the active and passive members 
of the Church were more pressed. 

With the sort of theological movement,, here indicated, 
more and more prevailing, the student of mediaeval mis- 
sions can anticipate neither a missionary life on the part 
of the Church as a whole, nor the highest form of mis- 
sionary effort on the part of those individuals or orders 
who undertake to give Christianity to the heathen. 

II. The aim of these workers throughout this long 
period was, as in the Patristic age, to bring men under 
the power of the sacraments and make them the subjects' 
of priestly intercession and manipulation. A feeding on 
the word of God save in the broken and diluted and 
alloyed morsels, doled out in formularies of worship in 
second-hand homilies occasionally rendered, was seldom 
attempted; and, as the mediaeval world grew older, was 
more frowned upon. True, an exception appeared here 
and there, as in the great Alcwin. Called from the school 
at York, by Charles the Great, to become the teacher 
of Europe, and seeing how in the struggle with Saxon 
barbarism the emperor had imperilled the Church by 
seeking a conformity without knowledge and with- 
out faith, he said to him: "Carry on the publication of 
the Divine Words' according to the example of the 
Apostles." Of the Bishop of Salzburg he asked, "Of 
what use is baptism without faith? Faith is a matter 
of free will," he said, "not of compulsion, as the Holy 



Mediaeval Catholic Missions 93 

Augustine says. Man must be instructed and taught by 
repeated preaching and especially we must implore for 
him the grace of God." But these views did not prevail. 
Finally, in Latin Christendom, the word of God was 
forbidden to laymen, save certain small portions of it. 
Nor could these portions be had in the vernacular. The 
very notion of New Testament discipleship seemed likely 
to be lost. The missionaries wrought not to make dis- 
ciples but to induce men to suffer the ''clergy" to save 
them through priestly services of magical virtue. In the 
Greek Church a somewhat larger use was made of the 
word of God. 

III. He would be a rash man who would attempt to 
maintain that the New Testament was studied for the 
principles on which missions should he conducted and 
those principles consciously applied. Nothing of the 
sort is known to have been done by most of the mission- 
ary workers. They seem to have received by tradition 
from the Patristic age the principles which in that age 
had begun to supplant those of the apostolic age. The 
missionary strategy appears in the workers getting first 
a priestly hold over leaders, kings, nobles', etc., and sub- 
sequently prevailing on them to enforce the acceptance 
of the current Christianity on their subjects; in their 
attacks on heathen superstitions and gods, and, coming 
off unhurt, arguing the victory of Christ over the god 
whose honor had been attacked, and in playing generally 
upon the ignorance and superstition of the people. 

There were, of course, missionaries of exceptionally 
worthy principles here and there. There was one so 
scriptural in the principles on which he would have had 
missionary work done, that a special place must be made 
for him in this lecture. Of him more will be heard fur- 
ther on. 



94 Introduction to Christian Missions 

IV. The instruments used were as in the preceding 
period, the Scriptures and traditions, the Scriptures being 
made to bend to tradition, bribery, force, political, dip- 
lomatic, military, pious fraud, etc. 

V. The methods employed were also essentially the 
same as in the Patristic age. 

The evangelistic was one of their methods. But the 
evangel these missionaries carried with them to the 
mission fields had been overlaid by traditions, and bent 
to suit the traditions. The missionaries were ready to 
bend the Gospel further, too, to suit the occasions pre- 
sented in the new fields. They stooped to conquer. They 
further paganized the Gospel to suit the special tastes 
of those to whom they presented it. 

There was a crude employment of the medical method 
of missionary work. This was natural. The mission- 
aries were usually much more learned than the peoples 
amongst whom they worked, and knew more of medicine. 
In this age, too, the false claim of miraculous' powers 
was not infrequently made. 

The literary method was in application, used in cases 
worthily and with fine effect, as by the venerable Bede 
and Alfred the Great in England; often greatly abused, 
being made to forward the worship of saints, angels, or 
relics. Since the "clergy" were growing in unwillingness' 
to allow the people the Scriptures in their vernacular, 
and because linguistic learning was at a low ebb through- 
out most of the period, and because amongst most of the 
European peoples the vernaculars were insufficiently de- 
veloped to serve as good literary vehicles', few and feeble 
efforts were made to translate the Scriptures. 

The educational method was in vogue to some extent. 
The leading missionaries were in most cases monks as 



Mediaeval Catholic Missions 95 

well as priests or bishops. Monasteries were established 
throughout the continent of Europe and the British Isles. 
Some of them became seminaries of learning; generally 
very limited, indeed, but of great value to the people in 
the absence of anything better. Children of the neighbor- 
hood were frequently taught by a brother of the cloister, 
the sons of new converts of noble or royal orders were 
often sent to the monastery for training; children were 
sometimes dedicated to the monastic life, in their child- 
hood, and were trained therein for a measure of useful- 
ness to the living world not contemplated by the founders 
of monasticism. 

Under the forms of monasticism the industrial method 
also found extensive application. A monastery was as a 
rule an institution competent to supply the temporal 
necessities of its members. Some of the brothers gave a 
measure of attention to agriculture and dairying and 
stock-raising; some to the mechanic arts; in rarer in- 
stances, some to the fine arts and to learning. In the 
effort to support themselves and their work, they became, 
by example, teachers of the communities around them in 
many of the arts of civilization, and wrought for their 
material advancement along many lines. 

These were the chief methods by which the mission- 
aries sought to apply their much be-clouded and be- 
covered evangel to the minds and hearts of the heathen. 
As for the instruments, bribery, force, pious fraud, etc., 
those who used them, and they were very many, were 
not scrupulous or careful as' to the method of their appli- 
cation provided it appeared to promise success. 

VI. This was less an age of missionary endeavor on 
the part of the rank and file of the Church than the 
Patristic age. The missionaries were commonly monkish 



96 Introduction to Christian Missions 

priests or monks grouped around a monkish priest. Such 
were Columbanus and Gallus, from the Irish Church, 
who labored in Gaul and Switzerland. Such was Augus- 
tine, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, 
whom, when abbot of the monastery of Saint Andrews 
at Rome, that other monk who had been thrust into the 
papacy and is known as Gregory the Great, had pitched 
upon to convert the fair-haired Anglo-Saxon nation 
whom he himself had longed to evangelize. Such was 
Willibrod, the Northumbrian monk, who labored amongst 
the Friesians. This Willibrod stirred up Saxon Winfrid, 
who had received a monastic training, and become a monk, 
to attempt his' great labors whereby he is known as "the 
Apostle of Germany," Boniface. This Boniface, as de- 
sirous of Romanizing independent Christian communities 
as of converting heathen, availed himself of every favor- 
ing wind of circumstance. In the wake of Charles 
Martel he finds the people of Hesse open to his mission- 
ary efforts. A temporary absence was abused by not a 
few of his converts to revert to heathenism. On his 
return he found many of them engaged in Thor-worship. 
He determined to strike a blow that would shatter all 
belief in Thor. In the presence of enraged heathen and 
frightened half-Christians, he cut down the sacred oak 
of Giesmar in Hesse. Seeing the mighty tree crash to 
the ground and the bold missionary unhurt, the people 
shouted, "The Lord, He is God." The tree was riven, 
and out of it a chapel was built. Converts multiplied. 
In the ninth century Ansgar, a monk of Corbie, was the 
leading missionary of the Scandinavian peoples. 

If we turn to missions amongst the Slavs, we find that 
the great missionaries to Bulgaria, after the middle of 
the ninth century, have come from the walls of a convent. 



Mediaeval Catholic Missions 97 

Cyrillus had enjoyed unusual advantages for secular 
learning, but had subsequently entered the clerical state, 
taking up his abode in a monastery together with his 
brother Methodius. Thence they, Cyril and Methodius, 
set out to take the leading part in the conversion of the 
Bulgarian people, — to do for them what Ulfilas had 
done for the Goths of southeastern Europe in the latter 
part of the fourth century, — to give them an organized 
language and a version of the Bible therein. Just on 
the eve of the Reformation also we find monks, Domini- 
cans and Franciscans, particularly, enlisting in mission- 
ary enterprise in the New World. In Asia the most 
noted missionary worker of the long mediaeval era was 
the Latin, Franciscan monk, John de Monte Corvino, 
of the thirteenth century. Being more anxious to Roman- 
ize Nestorians than to convert heathen, he got into 
trouble and secured unsatisfactory results. Francis of 
Assisi's' fruitless forcing himself into the presence of 
the Sultan of Egypt and preaching Christianity in his 
court may be mentioned as a further indication of a mis- 
sionary spirit amongst monastics. The influence of the 
founder of the Franciscan order was to swing his order 
in the same direction. 

The Crusades, beginning in the end of the eleventh 
and continuing till near the end of the thirteenth century, 
have sometimes been classed as missionary enterprises. 
No doubt some of the crusaders desired the conversion 
of the Mohammedans, but these seem to have made no 
worthy effort to make converts, and the great body of 
crusaders were concerned only to wrest the holy places' 
from the Islamites. The crusades occupied an important 
place in the history of the progress of European civiliza- 
tion. They were educative instrumentalities in the hand 



9^ Introduction to Christian Missions 

of Providence whose value is hard to overestimate; but 
they did not make in their own nature for the propaga- 
tion of mediaeval Christianity. 

Before taking leave of the missionary workers of this 
period, more than passing mention should be made of 
Raymund Lull. Living in the thirteenth century, he re- 
vived the apostolic conception of missionary ideals ; and 
may well be written down as, in principles, the most 
Pauline missionary from the time of Constantine to the 
time of William Carey. 

Raymund Lull was born in that age of world-wide 
confusion, when the vast power of the German Empire 
was on the wane, and separate states were crystallizing, 
when constitutional government was in its tottering in- 
fancy in England, when Tartars were overrunning 
European Russia, when the Christians were being driven 
from their last strongholds in the Holy Land, when the 
Ottoman Turks were rising into power, when Genghis 
Khan's Mongol hordes were flooding the lands of the 
East, when all Europe was poured together with expecta- 
tion of change, when the feudal system was* breaking up, 
when the use of gunpowder and the mariner's compass 
and paper were proclaiming the coming of a new era, 
when scholasticism had reached its height, when physical 
science had made its beginning as with Roger Bacon, 
when the travels of Marco Polo were revolutionizing 
men's notions of geography, when the paganization of 
Christianity was reaching its extreme in Europe, when 
superstition was rank, when mediaeval mysticism and 
almost all things mediaeval were grown great. He was 
born in 1235, in the city of Palma in the Island of 
Majorca, and belonged to an old and distinguished Cata- 
lonlan family. He was accustomed to mediaeval luxury 



Raymund Lull 99 

in his youth, his parents having a large estate and his 
father being distinguished for mihtary services. At an 
early age he became seneschal of James II. King of 
Aragon. In virtue of his office he had superintendence 
of feasts and ceremonies. He had unbounded opportuni- 
ties for pleasures of a worldly sort; and, according to 
his ov^n testimony, he availed himself of the opportuni- 
ties. Though married and blessed with children, he 
sought the reputation of a gallant and had intrigues with 
various women, — lived a life of dashing profligacy. He 
prostituted fine poetic gifts and musical ability to the 
purposes of seduction. True, there were other hours 
spent in warfare, in horsemanship and in writing on these 
arts. But his life was chiefly that of a dissolute courtier. 
The story of his conversion has been told in the fol- 
lowing words: "One evening the seneschal was' sitting 
on a couch with his cithern on his knees, composing a 
song in praise of a noble married lady who had fascin- 
ated him but who was insensible to his passion. Sud- 
denly, in the midst of these erotic songs, he saw, on his 
right hand, the Saviour hanging on the cross, the blood 
trickling from his hands and feet and brow, look re- 
proachfully at him. Raymund, conscience-struck, started 
up ; he could sing no more ; he laid aside his cithern and, 
deeply moved, retired to bed. Eight days after, he again 
attem.pted to finish the song and again, as before, the 
image of Divine Love incarnate appeared — the agonized 
form of the Man of Sorrows. The dying eyes of the 
Saviour were fixed on him, mournfully pleadingly; 

"See from His head, His hands, His feet 
Sorrow and love flow mingling down: 
Did ere such love and sorrow meet 
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?" 



100 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Lull cast his lute aside, and threw himself on his bed, a 
prey to remorse. He had seen the highest and deepest 
unrequitted love. But the thought that 

"Love so amazing, so Divine 
Demands my soul, my life, my all, 

had not yet reached him. The effect of the vision v^as 
so transitory that he was not ready to yield until it again 
repeated itself. Then Lull could not resist the thought 
that this was a special message to himself to conquer his 
lower passions and to devote himself entirely to Christ's 
service. He felt engraved on his heart, as it were, the 
great spectacle of divine self-sacrifice. Henceforth he 
had only one passion, to love and serve Christ. But 
there arose the doubt, How can I, defiled with impurity, 
rise and enter on a holier life? Night after night, we are 
told, he lay awake, a prey to despondency and doubt. 
He wept like Mary Magdalene, remembering how much 
and how deeply he had sinned. At length the thought 
occurred: Christ is meek and full of compassion; He 
invites all to come unto Him; He will not cast me out. 
With that thought came consolation. Because he was 
forgiven so much he loved the more, and concluded that 
he would forsake the world and give up all for his 
Saviour." * 

He subsequently was led to think that he could devote 
his energies to no higher work than that of proclaiming 
the Gospel to the Saracens. But as he was a layman, and 
as the clergy were supreme, he concluded that he would 
best begin his work by composing a treatise which should 
demonstrate the truth of Christianity and convince the 

* Samuel M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, pp. 34-36, 



Raymund Lull ioi 

warriors of the Crescent of their errors. This book 
would be unintelHgible to the Saracens, unless it were 
in Arabic. Lull did not know Arabic. These and other 
difficulties almost drove him to despair. He was not to 
despair utterly, however. The fires of love were re- 
kindled by the words of a Franciscan preacher. Lull 
made up his mind once for all, sold his estates, reserved 
only a scanty allowance for wife and children, and gave 
the rest of the proceeds to the poor. His vow of conse- 
cration was as follows : 

"To Thee, Lord God, do I now offer myself and my 
wife and children and all that I possess; and since I 
approach Thee humbly with this gift and this sacrifice, 
may it please Thee to accept all that I give Thee and offer 
up for Thee, that I, my wife and my children may be 
Thy humble slaves." t 

He donned the coarse garb of a penitent; under the 
influence of the notions of the age, he made pilgrimages 
to various Churches on the Island of Majorca; and 
prayed for divine assistance in the work he had resolved 
to undertake. Love for the personal Christ welled up 
in his heart and moved his life. Hence the motto of his 
old age: "He who loves not lives not; he who lives by 
the life cannot die." Hence also his readiness to attack 
the Mohammedan world in one of its most aggressive, 
most arrogant and most dominating periods; and in a 
period when Christian misrepresentation and hatred of 
the Mohammedans was almost universal and extreme. 
In that age he wrote : "I see many knights going to the 
Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking that they can 
acquire it by force of arms'; but in the end all are de- 
stroyed before they attain that which they think to 

t Samuel M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, p. 42. 



102 Introduction to Christian Missions 

have. Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the 
Holy Land ought not to be attempted except in the way 
in which Thou and Thine Apostles acquired it, namely, 
by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears and 
blood." * 

In order to make this conquest he purchased a Sara- 
cen slave, and with him as a teacher, set himself to learn 
the Arabic language. He spent nine years in this task, 
and in the contemplation of God, and in mentally tracing 
the outlines of the book with which he hoped to over- 
whelm Islam and demonstrate the articles of Christian 
doctrine. In his forty-first year he spent four months 
in writing the book and praying for the divine blessing 
upon its arguments. This work, "The Ars Major sive 
Generalise' intended for the special work of converting 
the Moslems, was to include also "a universal art of ac- 
quisition, demonstration, confutation, and to cover the 
whole field of knowledge and to supersede the inadequate 
methods of previous' schoolmen." 

Having completed his "Ars Major," and drawn at- 
tention to it by lecturing on it in public, he persuaded his 
king, James II., to found and endow a monastery in 
Majorca in which Franciscan monks should be taught 
the Arabic tongue, trained for disputation with Moslems, 
and acquainted with geography. He sought "to gain over 
the shepherds of the Church and the princes' of Europe" 
to the cause of missions ; he visited repeatedly Rome and 
Paris, in the hope of having similar missionary colleges 
founded. He plead in all quarters that monks of "holy 
lives and great wisdom should form institutions in order 
to learn various languages and be able to preach to un- 

* Quoted by Samuel Zwemer, Raymund Lull, pp. 52, 53. 



Raymund Lull 103 

believers/' From a council at Vienna, in 131 1, he at 
length secured a decree that professorships of the orien- 
tal languages should be established in the universities of 
Paris', Oxford, and Salamanca and in all cities where the 
Papal court should reside." t 

Meantime, he had tried to influence Christian men to 
go as missionaries by himself going on missionary tours. 
The very year in which Acre fell into the hands of the 
Mamelukes, he set out to experiment whether he himself 
could not persuade some of them by conference with 
their wise men and by manifesting to them, according to 
the "divinely given method," the incarnation of the Son 
of God and the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity in 
the Divine unity of essence." His efforts in Tunis in 
1292 were not fruitless, though he was finally driven out 
of the country. Later he visited Cyprus' and Asiatic 
Turkey. Again he visited Africa, suiTered imprisonment 
but was spared his life owing to the honor with which 
he inspired the Moslems by his magnificent courage. A 
third time he returned to Africa, this time to sacrifice 
his life in the effort to win the Moslems. 

Of Raymund Lull, Dr. George Smith well says : "No 
Church, Papal or Reformed, has produced a missionary 
so original in plan, so ardent and persevering in execu- 
tion, so varied in gifts, so inspired by the love of Christ, 
as the saint of seventy-nine, whom Mohammedans stoned 
to death on the 30th June, 13 15. In an age of violence 
and faithlessness he was the apostle of heavenly love." * 

VIL The numbers won in this long period were 
considerable. The thirty-five millions of 590 became 

t Samuel M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull. p. 78. 

* George Smith, Short History of Christian Missions, p. 108. 



104 Introduction to Christian Missions 

one hundred millions. The rate of growth during the 
period, however, was small as compared with the Church 
between lOO and 311. Had the Church grown between 
590 and 1517 as it grew between 100 and 311, it would 
have numbered over three billions of people, that is, it 
would have overtaken the population of the globe and 
made the whole world Christian long before 15 17. The 
rate of growth in this long period was only about one- 
thirtieth as rapid as' in the post-apostolic age. Not only 
so; there were perhaps amongst the nominal Christians 
of 1 5 17 few more genuine Christians than were in the 
smaller body of Christians of 311. The prevalent type 
of Christianity on the eve of the Reformation was so 
formal, so legalistic, so sacramental, and so vitiated in 
other respects as to hinder the free working of that por- 
tion of God's truth which it carried. The growth of the 
real Church was much less than it seemed. 

It is to be remembered, indeed, that such had been 
the destruction of civilization and of the arts by the bar- 
barian influx, such the confusion wrought by the Moham- 
medan conquests and such the disturbed state of society 
throughout the Middle Ages, when every one was doing 
that which was right in his own eyes, that one could not 
reasonably expect such growth in this long period as took 
place in the ante-Nicene and post-apostolic ages. But 
from the aims of the missionaries, the instrumentalities 
they employed, and the methods in vogue, and the whole 
manner of working, little better results could have been 
expected. 

VIII. Much territory was lost by the Christians in 
this age. The Mohammedans overran Arabia, and Syria, 
and Egypt, and North Africa, and Spain, and equally 
huge territories in the East. In many quarters they al- 



Mediaeval Catholic Missions 105 

most annihilated Christianity. Everywhere they reduced 
it fearfully. But in Europe large gains of territory were 
made for Christianity. Germany, save in its northeast- 
ern part, became Christian as early as the beginning of 
the ninth century. By 1050 Denmark became pretty thor- 
oughly Christian. Sweden and Norway followed; and 
afterward Greenland and Iceland were affected by Chris- 
tian teaching. In the latter part of the ninth century 
Bulgaria was added to Christian territory. Towards the 
end of the tenth century Russia received wholesale bap- 
tism ; and towards the close of the period the re-conquest 
of the portion of Spain long held by Islamites extended 
Christian territory in that quarter. Europe was nomi- 
nally Christian in 15 17. 

IX. Before leaving the mediaeval missionary work, 
which, as a whole, falls so far short of the apostolic 
standard in so many respects, let us remark the intense 
devotion and zeal of many of the missionaries. There 
can be no denial of the sincere and thorough-going con- 
secration to the building-up of the Church of most of 
them; nor of the devotion to the Church of not a few 
of them. In this respect they are an example and inspir- 
ation to the Church of our day. 

Let us remark, also, that we should be very grateful 
to God for them. What would have become of northern 
Europe and of North America had not God awakened 
this missionary zeal? How much of all that is rightly 
prized in the modern civilizations' of these peoples, could 
never have been theirs down to this day, had these men 
not thus wrought for them ! 



LECTURE VI. 

Erasmus's Missionary Ideals; Roman Catholic 
Missions, 15 17 to the Present. 

A noble missionary ideal was entertained by Eras- 
mus amongst the representatives of the Roman Catho- 
lic Church in the early years of the Reformation Era. 
Erasmus was born about 1467, at Rotterdam. It is 
his glory to have given to his age the New Testament 
in the original Greek, with a Latin translation of his 
own which became the basis of Luther's matchless 
German version. He set a true missionary value on 
God's word. He longed that ''the weakest woman 
should read the Gospel — read the Epistles of Paul;" 
he wished "that they were translated into all languages 
so that they might be read and understood not only 
by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Sara- 
cens." He desired ''that the husbandman should sing 
portions of them to himself as he followed the plow, 
that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his 
shuttle; that the traveler should beguile with their 
stories the tedium of his journey." In writings from 
various epochs of his life he is found expressing the 
desire for a universal knowledge of the sacred Scrip- 
tures. He is found going out toward the Turks in a 
way that reminds one of Raymund Lull. He writes: 
"The most effective way of conquering the Turks 
would be, if they were to see the spirit and teaching 
of Christ expressed in our lives; if they perceived that 
we were not aiming at empire over them, thirsting 



Erasmus's Missionary Ideals 107 

for their gold, coveting their possessions, or desiring 
anything whatsoever, save their salvation and the glory 
of Christ." 

In the year before his death he gave to the world 
his ''Ecclesiastes, or a Treatise on the Manner of Preach- 
ing," in four books. In the first book, he treats of 
the dignity, responsibility, piety, purity, prudence and 
other virtues of the preacher. Parts of it "read like 
a modern missionary address." After pointing to the 
illustrious examples of Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine, 
and Gregory the Great, who though burdened with the 
care of all the Churches, and weakened by sickness 
and disease, gave themselves to continual preaching 
and sent forth missionaries to distant regions, he writes 
with warmth : 

'We daily hear men deploring the decay of the 
Christian religion, who say that the Gospel message 
which once extended over the whole earth is now con- 
fined to the narrow limits of this land. Let those, then, 
to whom this is an unfeigned cause of grief, beseech 
Christ earnestly and continuously to send laborers into 
His harvest, or, more correctly, sowers to scatter His 
seed. Everlasting God! how much ground there is' in 
the world where the seed of the Gospel has never 
yet been sown, or where there is a greater crop of tares 
than of wheat! Europe is the smallest quarter of the 
globe; Greece and Asia Minor the most fertile. Into 
these countries the Gospel was first introduced from 
Judea with great success. But are they not now wholly 
in the hands of the Mohammedans and men who do 
not know the name of Christ? What, I ask, do we 
now possess in Asia which is the largest continent 
when Palestine herself, whence first shone the Gospel 



io8 Introduction to Christian Missions 

light, is ruled by heathens ? In Africa, what have we ? 
There are surely in these vast tracts barbarous and 
simple tribes who could easily be attracted to Christ 
if we sent men among them to sow the good seed. Re- 
gions hitherto unknown are being daily discovered, 
and more there are, as we are told, into which the 
Gospel has never yet been carried. I do not at present 
allude to the millions of Jews who live among us, nor 
to the very many Gentiles who are attached to Christ 
merely in name, nor do I refer to the schismatics and 
heretics which abound. Oh, how these would turn to 
Christ if noble and faithful workers were sent among 
them, who would sow good seed, remove tares, plant 
righteous trees, and root out those which are corrupt ; 
who would build up God's house, and destroy all 
structures which do not stand on the Rock of 
Ages; who would reap the ripe fruit for Christ 
and not for themselves, and gather souls for 
their Master, and not riches for their own use. 
The King of Ethiopia, commonly known as the 
land of Prester John, lately submitted himself 
to the Roman See ; and he held no small controversy 
with the Pope, because the Ethiopians, although not 
alien from faith in Christ, had been so long neglected 
by the Shepherds of the world. And some good men, 
who are anxious to extend religious knowledge, com- 
plain that the Pilapians, who lived north of Scythia, 
and are wonderfully simple and uncultured, are en- 
slaved by some Christian princes; but so hard pressed 
are they by the heavy yoke of man that they cannot 
take upon them the easy yoke of Christ. The wealth 
of others, moreover, has so spoiled them that the riches 
of the Gospel avail them nothing. But is it not well- 
pleasing and right in the sight of God, to enrich rather 



Erasmus's Missionary Ideals 109 

than to spoil those whom we strive to win for Christ, 
and so to initiate them into our faith that they may 
rejoice to have become subservient to those under 
whose sway they live more righteously than they were 
hitherto accustomed to do? We have known wild 
and horrible beasts to have been trained either for 
pleasure or for ordinary labor; but have we known 
men to have been so humanized as' to serve Christ? 
Kings keep in their employment men whose duty it is 
to teach elephants to leap, lions to sport, and lynxes 
and leopards to hunt ; but has the King of the Church 
ever found men ready to call their fellows to the ser- 
vice of his dear Son? I know there is no beast to 
tame so difficult as the stubborn and hard-hearted Jew; 
but nevertheless even he can be brought into subjec- 
tion by kindness and love. But now I speak of nations 
who stray as sheep without a shepherd, because they 
have never had any Christian teaching. So true is this, 
that if we can credit the account of travellers who 
visit these regions the Christian princes themselves' 
who rule them prevent any missionary of the Gospel 
from visiting their dominions, lest, gaining wisdom, 
their subjects should throw off the grievous yoke under 
which they labor. For these tyrants would rather rule 
brutes than men. 

"And what shall I say of those who sail around un- 
known shores, and plunder and lay waste whole states, 
without provocation? What name is given to such 
deeds? They are called victories. Even the heathen 
would not praise a victory over men against whom no 
war had been declared. But they say, the Turks de- 
light in such victories. This then is an excuse for 
razing cities to the ground! I do not know whether 



no Introduction to Christian Missions 

the advancement of the Christian faith would ex- 
cuse the demoHtion of a city by a Turk. There is 
the greatest difference between robbery and Chris- 
tian warfare, between preaching the kingdom of faith 
and setting up tyrants with their interests in this world, 
between seeking the safety of souls and pursuing the 
spoil of Mammon. Travellers bring home from distant 
lands gold and gems ; but it is worthier to carry hence 
the wisdom of Christ, more precious than gold, and 
the pearl of the Gospel, which would put to shame 
all earthly riches. We give too much attention 
to the things which debase our souls. Christ orders us 
to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers, 
because the harvest is plenteous and the laborers are 
few. Must we not then pray God to thrust forth lab- 
orers into such vast tracts? But all offer various ex- 
cuses. Moreover there are thousands of the Francis- 
cans who believe in Christ, and a large number of 
them in all probability burn with Seraphic fire. And 
the Dominicans also abound in equal numbers, and 
it is admitted that very many of them have in them 
the Spirit of Cherubim. From among them let men 
be chosen who are indeed dead to the world and alive 
to Christ, to teach the word of God in truth to the 
heathen. Some excuse themselves on the ground that 
they are ignorant of foreign language. Shall princes 
have no difficulty in finding men who, for the purpose 
of human diplomacy, are well acquainted with various 
tongues? Even Themistocles the Athenian in one year 
so mastered Persian that he could dispense with an 
interpreter in his intercourse with the king. And shall 
v/e not suffer the same zeal in so noble an enterprise? 
''Moreover, food and clothing were not wanting to 



Erasmus's Missionary Ideals hi 

the apostles among the savage and distant peoples 
visited. God also has promised to supply all the needs 
of those who further his kingdom. But if missionaries 
labor among a people so ungrateful as to deny them 
bread, water, or shelter, let them follow the shining 
example of Paul, that strong pillar of the Church, who 
worked with his own hands that he might be indepen- 
dent of all. He indeed stitched together goat skins 
for those believers to whom he gave the Holy Spirit 
and consecrated the body and blood of the Lord. 
Neither will miracles be denied, if circumstances de- 
mand them, only believe with holy love. Or at least 
a mind free from earthly lusts, a life of unbroken 
sobriety, a zeal to serve all men, long-suflfering, 
patience, becoming modesty, and an humble demeanor, 
will avail instead of miracles. For even the apostles 
did not everywhere work miracles, but they owed their 
success in preaching the Gospel rather to those attri- 
butes which I have mentioned. For miracles which 
show the Spirit of God working in men, are ascribed 
by many to magic. 

"I have not dealt with the last excuse, that is, the 
risk of death. Indeed since man can die but once, what 
can be more glorious and blessed than to die for the 
Gospel. Travellers go to the utmost part of the earth 
to see Jerusalem, and in so doing expose their lives 
to danger. Nor do all such return in safety from their 
journey. Yet crowds of men go every year to Jerusa- 
lem to see all sorts of places, and give no excuse for 
the risk they run of being killed. To see the ruins 
of Jerusalem ! What, I ask, is great in that? But what 
a great achievement it is to build a spiritual Jerusa- 
lem in the soul! How m.any soldiers there are who 



112 Introduction to Christian Missions 

fearlessly rush into battle, counting their lives vile in 
comparison with human praise. And yet does the 
Lord of all, who has promised as a reward, a crown 
of glory, find soldiers endued with a like mind? How 
much better it is to die as Paul did, than to be wasted 
by consumption, to be tortured for many years by 
gout, to be racked by paralysis, or to suffer a thou- 
sand deaths by the disease of the stone? Let us re- 
member also that death will not come before the time 
God has appointed. Death is not to be feared under 
the protection of Christ, who will not suffer a hair to 
fall to the ground without the will of the Father. 
Lastly, how does it happen that those who are called 
to the apostleship are deterred from their duties by 
the love of life? It is the first duty of an apostle to 
spend his life for the Gospel. Why, what account of 
life was taken by Crates the Theban, Socrates the 
Athenian, Diogenes of Sinope, and all those other 
philosophers who never knew Christ nor the apostles? 
"Bestir yourselves then, ye heroic and illustrious 
leaders of the army of Christ ; put on the helmet of sal- 
vation, the breast-plate of righteousness ; take to your- 
selves the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit, 
which is the word of God; have your loins girt with 
humility, your feet shod with holy affections; in a 
word be clothed with the whole mystic armor for 
preaching the Gospel of peace. Address yourselves 
with fearless minds to such a glorious work. Over- 
turn, quench, destroy, not men, but ignorance, godless- 
ness and other sins. For to kill thus is only to pre- 
serve. Do not, however, make earthly gain the object 
of your labors, but strive to enrich the heathen with 
spiritual treasures. Count it great gain if you save 



Erasmus's Missionary Ideals 113 

for the Redeemer souls snatched from the tyranny, 
and lead thousands in triumph to Him in heaven. It 
is hard work I call you to, but it is the noblest and 
highest of all. Would that God had accounted me 
worthy to die in such a holy work, rather than to be 
consumed by the slow death in the tortures I endure ! 
Yet no one is fit to preach the Gospel to the heathen 
who has not made his mind superior to riches or 
pleasure, aye, even to life and death itself. The cross 
is never wanting to those who preach the word of 
the Lord in truth. To-day even, there are kings, not 
unlike Herod, who mock at Christ and His doctrine. 
There are men like Annas and Caiaphas, there are 
Scribes' and Pharisees who would rather see heaven 
fall than allow any part of their power, or authority 
to decline. There are craftsmen who rage as Deme- 
trius did of old at Ephesus against the apostles who 
endangered his trade by their preaching. There are 
still Jews, who appearing to be friends of Christ, would 
sell Him, and give His body to whosoever desired it. 
There are still crowds who cry with vindictive hate, 
Crucify Him ! Crucify Him !" * 

This noble ideal, set forth by the Prince of the 
Humanists, can hardly have failed to bring forth some 
fruit in the lives of individual representatives of the 
Romish branch of Christendom to which he continued 
to cling. The ideals of mission work of the Roman 
Catholic Church at large, however, seem to have been 
little affected by it. There was no practical effort 
to put it into reality. This will appear in the review 

* Copied from George Smith's "Short History of Christian 
Missions", pp. 115-118. 



114 Introduction to Christian Missions 

of Roman Catholic Missions, 1517 to 1908, now to be 
given. 

I. The theoretical grasp of Christianity held by the 
Roman Catholic Church has remained ftxed, for the most 
part, throughout this long period. The Council of 
Trent, meeting in the middle of the sixteenth century, 
gave fixedness to the faith. The additions to the creed 
of the dogma of the immaculate conception of the 
Virgin Mary, in 1854, and the dogma of Papal infalli- 
bility and absolutism, in 1870, were, though import- 
ant, not radical additions ; and for the purposes of this 
review may be ignored. Besides, these doctrines were, 
from the reformation, practically a part of the creed 
of a large portion of the Romish body. 

In general the theory of Christianity obtaining in 
this modern era is essentially that which prevailed 
commonly in the Mediaeval era. The influence of the 
Protestant movement may be clearly seen, it is true, 
in the Trent creed ; and not only in the numerous 
anathemas which is called forth ; but in the modifica- 
tion of many doctrinal statements in a faintly Protes- 
tant direction. Protestant teaching had impressed the 
thought of the Papal Church to such a degree that 
partial, if slight concessions, to Protestant thought 
find expression in the decrees of Trent. Nevertheless, 
the theory of Christianity embodied in the creed is 
thoroughly legalistic, sacramental and priestly. Human 
works are given a large place in the outworking of 
redemption. Immense value is put upon the sacra- 
ments. Salvation begins with and is carried on and 
completed by them. The theory of their ex opere operato 
efficiency is maintained. The dogma of the special priest- 



Modern Romish Missions 115 

hood finds the most definite and assured expression. 
If the universal priesthood be conceded formally, the 
concession amounts to nothing. He who is not of the 
priesthood has no immediate access to God. He can- 
not read God's words except under restrictions de- 
termined by the hierarchy. In some cases these re- 
strictions amount to prohibition entire and complete ; 
in some cases they open the way to very important 
ethical and devotional parts of the Scriptures, shutting 
off from those portions more immediately concerned 
with the great doctrines of grace; and in cases where 
certain are permitted to have a specified version of 
the Scriptures, they are not allowed to put any other 
interpretation on any essential part of the Scriptures 
than the interpretation which the priesthood puts. So 
everywhere the special priest is held to be a necessary 
mediator between God and man. The ''layman" is a 
passive member of the Church. He must be carried 
by the priesthood. The Scriptural doctrines of a free 
access to the word of God, a free but reverent inter- 
pretation of it, a free and immediate access to the 
throne of grace, and of gratuitous justification, on the 
sinner's exercise of faith, were put under the ana- 
thema. 

With such a view of Christianity it was not to be 
expected that the Church as such, including the rank 
and file, should be missionary in spirit and conduct ; nor 
that the aim, methods, means, or achievements of such 
orders and individuals as should engage in mission 
work shall appear generally commendable from a Bibli- 
cal point of view. 

II. The aim of these workers continued to be, to bring 



ii6 Introduction to Christian Missions 

men under the manipulation of priestly hands — un- 
der the power of the sacraments, and priestly inter- 
cession and under some little priestly tuition. Few 
of the missionaries were concerned to teach the men 
they nominally discipled more than a mere superfi- 
cial knowledge of the Decalogue, the Lord's prayer, 
and the apostles' creed. Few of them were concerned 
to discover in those whom they received into the Church 
the marks of a genuine follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
The Roman Catholic priest of to-day holds that pro- 
vided the candidate is not in "mortal sin" un- 
repented of, and does not oppose a bar in the shape 
of a volition of his own will not to receive good from 
the sacrament, he can by baptism regenerate him. He 
holds that by an indissoluble bond the spiritual graces 
symbolized in the sacraments are tied to the visible 
material elements ; and that he can do the thing sym- 
bolized. Such an one naturally seeks above all things 
to get men under his magical hands. 

IIL It must be said that little respect has been 
paid by the Roman Church to the principles set forth 
in the New Testament for the regulation of missionary 
endeavor. Naturally they turn to other sources for their 
principles ; since the New Testament looks not to get- 
ting men under the hands of intermediaries between 
God and them ; but to bringing them through an in- 
telligent faith into the adoption of sons, God Himself 
graciously working in them the power of that faith. 
The distinctive principles of modern Roman Catholic 
missions are largely referable to men's devising. They 
do not try to bear witness in any one period where 
their witness-bearing will result in the greatest effi- 



Modern Romish Missions 117 

cient additional army of witness-bearers. Every mis- 
sion move has been directed toward the upbuilding 
of the power of the Church of Trent, the upbuilding 
of the power of the hierarchy and the Pope — an hier- 
archy undoubtedly most corrupt when considered as a 
whole. In this work the Church has shown much 
human strategy and tactics, for the most part as un- 
spiritual as that shown in the histories of secular 
powers. In short paganization and secularization had 
run to such lengths in the Romish Church before the 
time of the Council of Trent, that the principles which 
governed her missionary operations had become almost 
secular. They were about such as any secular power, 
with equal wisdom at its command, and with a natural 
religion which it was interested to spread, might have 
endeavored to apply. 

IV. The Instruments used in the effort at the propa- 
gation of the Church, have continued to be the Scrip- 
tures as interpreted by the Church, Church tradition 
to which the Scriptures have been made to bend, 
bribery, pious fraud, force political, diplomatic, or 
military, further paganization of the worship and life 
of Christianity and so forth, as occasions presented the 
opportunity and the temptation. A glaring but by no 
means lonely example of effort at wholesale bribery 
was given by Louis XIV., in his effort to convert the 
Huguenots. He and the Roman Catholic Church in 
France applied every form of political and military 
force also in the effort to convert the Huguenots. The 
history of every country of Western Europe, the his- 
tory of many sections in North and South America, 
the history of Japan, the history of Madagascar and of 



ii8 Introduction to Christian Missions 

India, etc., tell of similar instances of the use of secu- 
lar force to forward the progress of the Church.* 

Pious fraud and further paganization of Chris- 
tian worship and life have been resorted to wherever 
they promised to aid in getting control of a people, or 
a class, or individuals. The Jesuits have been most 
remarkable for their use of pious fraud and accommo- 
dation. Some extreme instances may be referred to 
with propriety in this connection. About 1606 Robert 
de Nobili, a nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine and the 
grand-nephew of Pope Marcellus 11. , "began in South 
India that system of conversion based upon a lie, which 
lasted for a century and a half before it ended in the 
collapse of the mission and the suppression of the 
order." He and many distinguished associates de- 
liberately professed to be Brahmans, made solemn 
oaths that they had sprung from Brahma. They 
lived as Brahminical penitents, clad in orange- 
colored dress, and sitting on a tiger skin; and 
joining in worship at once impious and in- 
decent. All this was to conceal their foreign origin, 
the knowledge of which they thought would be fatal 
to success ; and to enable them to do their priestly 
work on Brahmans who had no thought of abandoning 
their hereditary faith for Christianity. While this base 
and hypocritical course stank not only in the nostrils 
of Prostentants but also in those of multitudes of 

* "The doctrine promulgated by Benedict XIV., and re- 
affirmed by Pius VI. in 1791 is held in the Catholic Church: 
that the heathen are not to be forced into obedience to the 
Church, but that Protestants who have received baptism are 
so to be forced;" but, in practice, the Roman Catholics have 
not always been so liberal; and the principle itself allows the 
use of certain forms of force against the heathen. 



Modern Romish Missions 119 

Roman Catholics, it was not, in generic character, other 
than could be duplicated on most Romish missionary 
fields. As early as 1579, Ricci had entered China. He 
lived a cunning life, allowed the worship of ancestors 
and of Confucius to be carried on along vv^ith the 
worship of Mary, that he might enjoy the favor of 
the Emperor and the government. He pretended to be 
a Buddhist priest. If this again is an extreme case, 
it is generically typical; accommodation, dissimulation, 
and indirection were characteristic of other orders than 
Jesuits. In the Philippines, where the monks of the 
Augustinian, Franciscan and Dominican orders controlled 
the people ecclesiastically and politically during the 
Spanish occupancy of the islands, ''the Roman Catholic 
ritual became mingled in the most extraordinary man- 
ner with ceremonies borrowed from Paganism." 

V. The Methods employed have been, for the most 
part, those which the Church brought over with it 
out of the Mediaeval era. 

The missionaries have made use of a method analo- 
gous to the evangelistic. They have done considerable 
preaching of their partial and vitiated evangel. The 
method of Xavier may be taken as a worthy example 
of this species of work. His method, as pursued at 
Travancore in India, is thus described by himself: "As 
soon as I arrived in any heathen village where they 
sent for me to give baptism, I gave orders for all — men, 
women, and children — to be collected in one place. 
Then, beginning with the first elements of the Chris- 
tian faith, I taught them there is one God — I m.ade 
them each make three times the sign of the cross ; then, 
putting on a surplice, I began to recite in a loud voice 
and in their own language, the form of general con- 



I20 Introduction to Christian Missions 

fession, the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, 
the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the Salve Regina. 
Two years ago I translated all these prayers into the 
language of the country, and learned them by heart. 
I recited them so that all, of every age and condition, 
followed me in them. Then I began to explain shortly 
the Articles of the Creed, and the Ten Commandments 
in the language of the country. When the people ap- 
peared to me sufficiently instructed to receive bap- 
tism, I ordered them all to ask God's pardon publicly 
for the sins of their past life, and to do this with a 
loud voice and in the presence of their neighbors, still 
hostile to the Christian religion, in order to touch the 
hearts of the heathen and confirm the faith of the 
good. All the heathen are filled with admiration at 
the holiness of the law of God, and express the greatest 
shame at having lived so long in ignorance of the true 
God. They willingly hear about the mysteries and 
rules of the Christian religion, and treat me, poor sin- 
ner as I am, with the greatest respect. Many, how- 
ever, put away from them with hardness of heart the 
truth which they well know. When I have done my 
instruction, I ask one by one, all those who desire 
baptism if they believe without hesitation in each of 
the articles of faith. All immediately, holding their 
arms in the form of the cross, declare with one voice 
that they believe all entirely. Then at last I baptise 
them in due form, and give to each his name written 
on a ticket. After their baptism the new Christians 
go back to their houses and bring out their wives and 
families for baptism. When all are baptized I order 
all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and 
all the idols to be broken in pieces. I can give you 



Modern Romish Missions 121 

no idea of the joy I feel in seeing this done, witnessing 
the destruction of the idols by the very people who 
lately adored them. In all the towns and villages I 
leave the Christian doctrine in writing in the language 
of the country, and I prescribe at the same time the 
manner in which it is to be taught in the morning and 
evening schools. When I have done all this in one 
place, I pass to another, and so on successively to the 
rest. In this way I go all around the country, bringing 
the natives into the fold of Jesus Christ and the joy 
that I feel in this is far too great to be expressed in a 
letter." 

Xavier labored with intense zeal, endeavoring to 
"evangelize" many countries. Superficially as his work 
was done, his teaching was probably not less effective 
in any one locality than that of the average propagator 
of the Roman Catholic Church. He was less inclined 
to paganize further the Gospel he carried than vast 
numbers of his fellow workers showed themselves to 
be. 

The Roman Catholic missionaries of this period 
have used medicine largely as an aid in mission work. 
We owe to them the use of cinchona which has made 
mission work possible in fever-stricken lands ; and 
ipecac, and many other remedies. Apart from such 
discoveries they carried with them into many coun- 
tries a larger, if crude, knowledge of medicine and sur- 
gery than obtained amongst these peoples ; and made 
it a means of winning favor and introducing the faith. 
Sham miracles were also wrought, hypocondriacs were 
made to think themselves cured by unscrupulous propa- 
gandists. Miracle working relics and shrines were in- 
vented. In cases not infrequent a vast hold was gained 



122 Introduction to Christian Missions 

over credulous peoples by this counterfeit of the medi- 
cal method. 

The Literary method has been applied after a sort. 
^Not being much given to teaching, the Roman Catho- 
lic Church cannot be expected, on a purely foreign mis- 
sion field, to pursue the literary method save in a halt- 
ing and restricted way. Given to the invention of tales 
of saints and relics, it has made the literary arm sub- 
servient to the unworthy end of saint worship. 

The Educational method has found a limited applica- 
tion. Throughout a great portion of the period little 
attention was paid by the Romish missionaries to edu- 
cation. 

The Jesuits indeed, in their efforts to re-extend 
Romanism over portions of the German Empire, did 
make an effective use of the educational method. They 
got a hold of the youth of the middle and higher 
classes ; educated them for important civil positions, 
and at the same time turned them into biggoted and 
wiley disciples of their own order. It is not apparent 
that the general education of the people was desired by 
the Jesuits. They were the stoutest henchmen of the 
Papacy; and the Papacy can maintain its pretensions 
better amongst the ignorant and the learned sophists. 
Honest, open-minded, intelligent, but unsophisticated 
men, stumble at its doctrines. Little of an educative 
character was attempted by the Jesuits in the African, 
Asiatic, or American missions, prior to the beginning 
of the nineteenth century. Hence conditions were not 
created favorable to the production of a strong Chris- 
tian character; and when, two hundred and fifty years 
later Protestant missionaries entered the Asiatic field, 
"they found themselves without the slightest basis for 



Modern Romish Missions 123 

work in the form of existing versions of the Scriptures." 
Within the last hundred years Papists have made con- 
siderable improvement, but for the most part only 
where driven by outside influence, as in the United 
States of America, in order to maintain their hold on 
the minds of the youth, or to derive advantage of 
support by some civil power, and prevent the making 
of anti-Romish impressions. 

An industrial method has found frequent applica- 
tion. For example, in California, the plan was pur- 
sued of gathering the natives into communities where 
their industrial as well as religious training was in the 
hands of the missionaries. There were no less than 
twenty-three such communities formed as early as 1823 
within the bounds of California. Similar communi- 
ties were formed in other quarters. The reductions in 
Paraguay, under Jesuit auspices, were conspicuous 
examples of this method. 

These were the chief of the methods used by Rome 
in wielding her much be-clouded and changed evangel. 
In the use of her weapons of force, bribery, accommo- 
dation of the Christianity she carried, she has not been 
very scrupulous as to method. Now and then she has 
been pricked in conscience by the extremes to which 
certain of her representatives have gone in accominoaa- 
Hon as has appeared already. 

VI. The missionaries were not of course mere pri- 
vate members of the Church, such members having 
little instrumentality in the spread of the Church, ac- 
cording to the thought of the Romish communion. 
The Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, have been fore- 
most in providing the missionaries. They were all 
missionary orders. Amongst these, the Jesuits have 



124 Introduction to Christian Missions 

been most marked for ardor, zeal, and success; and, 
Xavier, whose methods of work have been presented, 
occupies the rank of the most distinguished Roman 
CathoHc missionary of the modern era. 

Born in the kingdom of Navarre in 1506, he came 
in his youth and young manhood, very fully under the 
influence of Protestant doctrines, which were blessed of 
God to make him saintly in experience, aim and life. 
Having been saved, as he wrote, by Ignatius Loyola, 
from "the deplorable dangers arising from my fami- 
liarity with men breathing out heresy," he adopted the 
Romish theory of sacramental salvation. Hence, as 
has been seen, he thought it the important thing to 
baptize men and secure from them the recital of the 
creed and a few prayers. He commenced the foreign 
missionary work of the order, gave it an impulse "which 
was caught up by numerous successors, until the 
record of the sixteenth century, so far at least as the 
extension of the Church went, is one of the most won- 
derful in history." Receiving the appointment of 
apostolic nuncio for India, in 1542, he began his work 
in the Christian settlements about Goa, and extended 
it to the heathen along the coast both East and 
West. He exerted a marvelous influence wherever he 
went, won converts by the thousands. He worked for 
three years in South India, for the most part among 
the lower castes; thence passed to the Chinese Archipe- 
lago, Malacca, the Molucas, and other islands. In 1549 
he went to Japan, labored there for two years with 
great success. He was about to enter China when 
his earthly career was cut off, December 2, 1552. Fel- 
low Jesuits carried on the work which he had inau- 
gurated in these several countries ; and effected an en- 



Modern Romish Missions 125 

trance into China. The vicious customs into which 
they descended, particularly in India and China, have 
been referred to. 

Amongst the most prominent Dominican mission- 
aries of the period was Bartholomew de Las Casas, 
who went to St. Domingo as a missionary to the In- 
dians in 1535; was made bishop of Chiapa, Mexico, 
in 1544; and spent his life in preaching to the Ameri- 
can Aborigines and in defending them against the 
cruelty of their conquerors. To rescue the Indians 
from the slavery to which their conquerors were re- 
ducing them, he sanctioned the scheme of supplying 
their places in the mines and pearl fisheries with 
negroes imported from Africa. He did this that his 
converts might be spared and because the Africans 
could better endure these labors. He afterwards, how- 
ever, regarded his course as a mistake and deplored it 
as unjust to the Africans. He died in 1566. 

The Franciscans were very active in missionary en- 
deavor; but produced no leaders of equal eminence 
with Las Casas, the- Dominican, or Xavier, the Jesuit. 

During the sixteenth century these orders indulged 
in mutual jealousies and antagonism. Hence the need 
of some common controlling power to direct the 
various missionary hosts and to prevent friction, be- 
came apparent. After some experimentation the 
Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith was 
established. 

This "congregation" was founded by the first Jesuit 
pupil who became Pope — founded June 21, 1622. It 
consists of cardinals, prelates, consultors and secre- 
taries, all appointed by the Pope ; and has vast preroga- 
tives. It was designed to propagate and maintain the 



126 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Gospel in all parts of the world. It has long been a 
richly endowed institution. In 1627, Urban VIII., 
added to it, the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, founded 
by a wealthy Spanish noble, the two forming the 
richest and best equipped missionary institution in the 
world. It has grown richer with the passing years. It 
has affiliated with it seminaries and agencies for rais- 
ing money in every part of the Roman Catholic world. 
It overlooks the education and support of all mission- 
aries and determines what orders shall work in the 
several fields. 

VII. The numbers won were considerable. The con- 
verts made by the Jesuits in India and Eastern Asia 
ran up into the hundreds of thousands. The Domini- 
cans had already gathered in thousands of converts on 
the West shore of Africa. The Franciscans, Domini- 
cans, Augustines and Jesuits made vast numbers of 
converts in Mexico, Central and South America; and 
considerable numbers in the territory now covered by 
the United States and the Dominion of Canada. But, 
partly owing to the indifferent character of the races, 
and partly owing to insufficient instruction carried by 
this Church which makes so much of sacraments and 
priestly mediation, these converts have not developed 
strong self-propagating Churches. Rome has suffered 
leakages too, so that notwithstanding her missionary 
work the entire Roman Catholic population of the 
globe to-day amounts only to about 231,000,000. 

This may appear to some a considerable gain in 
view of the Protestant exodous at the Reformation and 
in view of the fact that much of the mission effort 
has been amongst peoples difficult to impress on the 
one hand and unstable on the other. But the rate of 



Modern Romish Missions 127 

gain has been very slow, if compared with that in the 
apostoHc and ante-Nicene ages; for Rome controlled 
not less' than 100,000,000 men, women and children in 
the opening of the sixteenth century. To have in- 
creased by only 130 per cent, of itself in these four 
hundred years, argues a very small yearly growth, an 
average yearly growth of less than 1-3 of i per cent, 
of the number with which this Church entered the 
sixteenth century. Such a rate of growth argues no 
providential approval of the substitution of Mediaeval 
principles of Church propagation for those set forth in 
New Testament. 

VIII. The territories overrun in the imperfect man- 
ner heretofore described, include all the more habitable 
portions of North and South America, large portions 
OT Africa, of Eastern and Northeastern Asia, and large 
portions of European Protestant territories. The 
Romish Church now numbers amongst its members 
people of almost all races, nations and tribes. It is 
huge in territory loosely occupied. It outranks in 
point of numbers every other Christian sect, counting 
as it does all whom it baptizes as members. 



LECTURE VII. 

The Attitude of the Protestant and Reformed 
Churches toward Missions, 1517-1781. 

In the treatment of this subject it has been found 
convenient to divide the period at the year 1648; and to 
treat of the sub-divisions, 15 17 to 1648 and 1648 to 1781, 
in order. 

I. Accordingly, we take up, first, the relation of the 
Protestant and Reformed Churches to missions, 15 17 to 
1648. 

The great reformers, Luther and Calvin and their co- 
laborers carried their followers back so far toward the 
theory of Christianity which prevailed in the New Testa- 
ment age that were able to disapprove of false 
aims, instruments and methods employed by the Church 
of Rome in its missionary endeavor ; and so far that when 
their theory, by unessential but important modifications, 
in a subsequent period, had been conformed still more 
closely to the New Testament view, it was followed by a 
missionary period in character closely resembling in all 
fundamental respects the apostolic missionary period. 

In annihilating the doctrines of salvation by work, 
the special priesthood, the efficiency of the sacraments 
ex op ere operato ; and in establishing the doctrine of jus- 
tification by faith, the doctrine of the universal spiritual 
priesthood of all believers, the doctrine that the reception 
of good from the sacraments was dependent on their re- 
ception by a true faith, and in making the Scriptures to 
be the sole source of authority in religion, the reformers 



Protestant and Reformed Churches 129 

were conditioning a grasp of the true aim of missions, 
and were doing much to insure, when the teachings of 
Scripture about the Church should be more fully compre- 
hended, the recognition of the duty of the Church to be 
missionary. They were also doing much to lead the 
Church back to the God-given principles, instruments, 
and methods of missions'. But these heroes of the faith 
fumbled in their attempts to set forth adequately the 
Scriptural doctrines concerning the Church, particularly 
in regard to its rightful independence of the state, and 
in regard to the relation in which it stood to the great 
commission, given by our Lord to the Church as repre- 
sented by the Apostles, to make disciples of all nations; 
they erred also in their theory of Christian eschatology. 
And, notwithstanding the immensely more Biblical theory 
of Christianity introduced by the Reformers into the 
spheres of their influence, their imperfect doctrine of the 
Church and their imperfect doctrine of last things,* as 
will appear, rendered them non-missionary save as 
against Romanism, for a hundred years after the Reform- 
ation, and has exerted a crippling influence on them down 
to this day. 

The Reformation fell in the most magnificent age 
of discovery, when a vast number of peoples were brought 
to a knowledge of the European Christians. The Roman 
Catholic Church by these discoveries was excited to un- 
wonted missionary efforts. The Protestants not only 
made little foreign mission effort, during the entire 
Reformation period, 15 17 to 1648, they showed little 
sense of an obligation on the Christian Church to do so, 
the way being opened. Their making little effort to give 

* This is more particularly true of Luther. 



130 Introduction to Christian Missions 

the heathen the Gospel has been explained, "and must be 
excused," in part, by the consideration that immediate 
intercourse with the heathen nations was not had by the 
Protestants during this period, save in the case of the 
Dutch and English as the period wore toward its close. 
At the beginning of the Reformation, the Spaniards and 
Portuguese had the control of the seas and were taking 
possession of the newly-discovered islands and contin- 
ents. No way was' then open to the Protestants 'Into 
the newly-discovered lands. Had they been desirous of 
sending missionaries in to those regions, they would not 
have been permitted to do so. 

Their making little effort to give the heathen the 
Gospel has been further explained and excused by the 
consideration that "the battle against heathenism within 
the old Christendom, the struggle for their own existence 
against Papal and worldly power, and the necessity of 
self-consolidation, summoned them primarily to a work of 
consolidation at home which claimed all the energy of 
young Protestantism." They, it must be allowed, had 
their hands full in the effort to maintain and spread the 
evangel amongst European peoples, in the face of the 
combined and aggressive opposition of the Papacy and 
the empire. 

The leading reformers not only did not attempt mis- 
sionary movements, they failed to apprehend the abiding 
missionary obligation of the Church as set forth in the 
Scriptures. Luther held that the obligation to universal 
missions rested on the Apostles alone; that such work 
had been practically done long before his age ; that no one 
in his day lay under the burden of such work, but that 
"each bishop and pastor had his appointed diocese or 
parish." He held also "that the end of the world was at 



Protestant and Reformed Churches 131 

hand, that the signs of the nearness of the last day were 
apparent, Antichrist in the Papacy, Gog and Magog in 
the Turks, so that no time remained for the further de- 
velopment and extension of the kingdom of God on 
earth." He considered the Turks to be the obdurate 
enemies in the last time by whom God visits Christendom 
for its sins. He looked upon the "heathen and Jews 
as having fallen under the dominion of the devil — and 
that, too, not without their own fault." Melancthon ex- 
pressed some of the same views in more dogmatic form. 
"It was the general view, shared by both Luther and 
Melancthon, that the whole course of this world was 
divided into three periods of 2,000 years, and that the 
third 2,000 years beginning from Christ would be short- 
ened, so that in the middle of the sixteenth century, some 
time in the year 1558, the last day would come." These 
views, and especially this eschatological position of these 
Lutheran reformers, "resting on their whole conception 
of history, when taken in connection with the fact that 
the heathen world of their time lay quite beyond their 
sphere of vision, clearly explain how we find in them no 
proper missionary ideas." 

In the case of Martin Bucer we find a recognition of 
the fact that the evangelization of the world had not been 
completed; and the view that God is looking after these 
heathen nations and will call and send other "apostles" to 
them ; but no perception of a duty resting on the Church 
to be missionary and to send out representatives to the 
heathen world. 

The views of Luther and Melancthon continued to 
influence their communion throughout their century and 
beyond. 

During the first half of the seventeenth century the 



132 Introduction to Christian Missions 

disturbed political conditions of Germany, and especially 
the Thirty Years' War, were unfavorable to the prosecu- 
tion of missionary enterprise. Here again, however, we 
not only find no mission work, we find little sense of obli- 
gation to it. This was owing chiefly to the continued 
prevalence of the views of Luther and Melancthon on 
the subject. It was held that the missionary commission 
was given to the Apostles alone, and that they had pro- 
claimed the Gospel to the whole world; and the extra- 
ordinary functions of the Apostles were magnified and 
inferences drawn from this that the Church had "no call 
to missions to the heathen and no authority to impart 
such a call." Such views were set forth by Joh. Gerhard, 
the great dogmatic theologian of Jena, who died in 1637. 
He attempted to demonstrate historically the alleged uni- 
versal extension of Christianity in the past, to demon- 
strate from Scriptural teaching that the obligation to 
preach tlie Gospel to the whole world ceased with the 
Apostles ; and to refute as absurd all the pleas' that might 
be adduced in favor of a continuous missionary obliga- 
tion upon the part of the Church. 

Such being the prevailing views, naturally there could 
be no general sense of obligations to missions in the 
Lutheran Communion. There were, indeed, men in the 
body, between 1600 and 1648, with more or less' light 
on the subject. An occasional leader, while not recog- 
nizing a duty as resting on the Church to send out mis- 
sionaries, yet laid upon such Christian rulers as possessed 
heathen territories the duty of Christianizing them. 
Other theologians admitted in principle the missionary 
duty of the Church, while deeming the times and oppor- 
tunities unsuitable to the practical discharge of it. Still 
others were found, here and there, who affirmed that 



Protestant and Reformed Churches 133 

missions are of right the business of the Church. These 
men, for the most part, raised their voices to complain 
of "the lack of the missionary understanding; or to re- 
mind the civil authorities of their missionary duties ; but 
such voices were very feeble, and as they wanted prac- 
tical point, they died away almost altogether unheard." 

It is not impossible that the one-sided and legal stress 
which orthodox Lutheranism was' at this time laying on 
the doctrines of grace, and its failure to emphasize the 
duty of serving God which is involved in the acceptance 
of divine grace, checked energetic Christian living and 
activities, — checked, amongst them, all tendencies toward 
a missionary ideal. However this may be, we shall see 
that the rise of this ideal is connected historically with 
a rise in godly living. 

During all this Reformation period the Lutheran 
Church was practically non-missionary so far as the 
heathen world was concerned. 

In 1559, Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, made an 
effort to incorporate into the evangelical Church the 
Lapps, who dwelt in the northern part of his kingdom. 
Since the twelfth century they had been nominally 
Catholic Christians; but in reality they had remained 
heathen. Gustavus's attempt, unsuccessful because his 
missionaries were unsuited to the work, has been called 
missionary, but it was rather a reforming act of terri- 
torial Church authority. 

Calvin did not hold that the world had been evan- 
gelized through the Apostles. On the other hand, while 
holding that the apostolate was an extraordinary office 
and has not been perpetuated, he taught that the exten- 
sion of Christianity is still in progress. His grasp of 
Christianity was, so far, better than Luther's, but he did 



134 Introduction to Christian Missions ' 

not teach that an obligation rests upon the Church to 
carry the Gospel to all nations. He does not deny it even 
by implication, but neither does he teach it. He did, 
however, teach "that the Christian magistracy has the 
duty of introducing the true religion into a still unbe- 
lieving land," — a view which, as has appeared, was, at 
a later time, developed among the Lutherans. 

A promise of better things is seen in the text on the 
title page of the first printed and official edition of the 
Scottish Confession, presented by the committee of which 
John Knox was' a member, to the Parliament in 1560: 
*'And this glad tidings of the kingdom shall be preached 
throughout the whole world for a witness to all nations; 
and then shall the end come." The promise was re- 
peated in the prayer with which this confession closes: 
"Arise, O Lord, and let Thine enemies be confounded; 
let them flee before Thy presence that hate Thy godly 
name. Give Thy servants strength to speak Thy word 
in boldness; and let all nations' attain to Thy true 
knowledge." 

Adrian Savaria, born 1531, for a time Reformed 
pastor in Antwerp, from 1582 to 1587 preacher and pro- 
fessor in Leyden, a clergyman of the Church of England 
after 1587, when for political reasons he had removed 
thither, published a treatise in 1590, the purpose of which 
was to vindicate the Episcopal office in Church constitu- 
tion. He contended that the Episcopal office was' needed 
for the maintenance and strengthening of existing 
Churches and for the planting of new ones. In this con- 
nection he found occasion to speak of missions'; and 
shov/s' that the Apostles themselves could only have car- 
ried out the missionary command in a very limited meas- 
ure; and that this command applied not merely to them 



Protestant and Reformed Churches 135 

personally but to the whole Church which they repre- 
sented. But this correct view of the missionary com- 
mand produced no effect upon his Protestant contem- 
poraries ; in part, it may be supposed, because they were 
not in close touch with the heathen, and, in part, because 
his exposition of the command was coupled with a fight 
over Church polity. 

The theory as to the obligation of Christian civil 
governments to extend Christianity into their unbelieving 
territories found practical expression about 1555, when 
a number of Frenchmen of the Reformed creed went to 
Brazil to found a colony, which should also be an asylum 
of their persecuted brethren at home. The project was 
encouraged by Admiral Coligny. Calvin was appealed to 
for pious Christians and preachers, that they might exert 
a good influence upon the colonists and declare the Gospel 
to the heathen. Four preachers and a number of other 
persons' of the Reformed faith were sent out from 
Geneva. But the enterprise had been placed under the 
superintendence of the unprincipled Durand de Ville- 
gagnon. He had become Reformed at a moment when 
fortune seemed to be on the side of the Protestants. But 
upon the rise of Roman Catholicism to commanding and 
merciless dominance, he treated all the Protestants in the 
colony as traitors and banished them from the colony. 
The majority of them made their way back to France 
amidst the greatest hardships. On some who were un- 
willing to trust themselves to the leaking vessels on 
which these exiles must cross the ocean, Villegagnon did 
capital execution. One of the clergymen, Richier, a few 
weeks after arriving in Brazil, had written that "they 
had purposed to win the native heathen for Christ, but 
that their barbarism, their cannibalism, their spiritual 



136 Introduction to Christian Missions 

dullness, etc., extinguished their hope." The enterprise, 
on its most favorable, sober interpretation, hardly 
amounted to more than a fruitless episode in the Re- 
formed movement as inspired by John Calvin. It was 
at bottom neither more nor less distinctly missionary than 
Calvin's theory of Church-State. 

Calvinists found scope for similar enterprises under 
more favorable conditions after the opening of the seven- 
teenth century. About this time the Dutch and British 
began to divide the dominion of the sea with Spain and 
Portugal, — began that career which was to make them 
the lords of wide-spreading domains; and, in part, at 
the expense of these same Spaniards and Portuguese. 
The Dutch, having emancipated themselves' from the 
Spanish yoke, drove the Portuguese from much of their 
East Indian possessions and in a few years founded a 
considerable colonial empire in the Moluccas, Ceylon, 
Formosa, and the great Malaysian islands'. The Dutch 
Church had a noble opportunity which it might have 
used had it not been for the theory as to the proper re- 
lation of Church and State which obtained and the prac- 
tical application of that theory, resulting in enervation 
of the Church. It regarded the work of missions as a 
duty resting on the colonial government. This was natu- 
ral, since it was regarded as' proper that the State should 
support the Church at home. Accordingly the East India 
Company, founded in 1602, was bound by its state charter 
to care for the planting of the Church and the conversion 
of the heathen in the newly won territory. This' com- 
pany very early began missionary work, — before there 
had been any Dutch Protestant missionary literature. Its 
missionaries had to undertake both the spiritual care of 
the European colonial officials and the conversion and 



Protestant and Reformed Churches 137 

training of the heathen. At first the missionaries were 
untrammeled, but in the course of time they were made 
too much a part of the poHtical machinery of government. 
At first its missionaries were devoted to mission work ; 
but the Company developed a concern that their mission- 
aries should give less attention to this work. The Dutch 
Church urged upon the Company the importance and the 
duty of pressing the work; but it never occurred to it 
to push mission work in these territories out of its own 
funds; and the majority of its clergy showed little dis- 
position to missionary work. If laudable aims, prin- 
ciples, instruments and methods characterize this effort 
in its earlier stages, these were not sufficiently maintained 
as time went on. There came to be too little preaching 
in the native tongue, too little Bible translation, too little 
education of native helpers in school and Church. A 
sham-Christianization of the natives went on. ''Use was 
made of all kinds of pressure," inducements of outward 
advantage, physical force, prohibition of heathen customs. 
Thousands were received into the Church, by baptism, 
without any considerable instruction. The evil virus 
of the union of Church and State kept the Dutch Church 
from a theoretical recognition of its own obligation to 
missions', and introduced into the mission work of the 
civil power maxims and practices and instrumentalities 
foreign to the true character of the Church. 

The Dutch West India Company attempted mission 
work in Brazil; but the early resignation of a mission- 
ary governor and the short life of the colony rendered 
it of no importance. 

England's mastery of the sea began with the destruc- 
tion of the Spanish Armada, 1588. Political and reli- 
gious struggles between parties in the home land hin- 



138 Introduction to Christian Missions 

dered the rise of the missionary spirit for a time; but 
stimulated the founding of colonies in North America; 
and thus indirectly led to interesting endeavors' in behalf 
of American Indians contiguous to the early British col- 
onies. The struggles occasioned the large Puritan emi- 
gration from 1620 on. The Pilgrim Fathers "adopted 
the conversion of the native heathen into their colonial 
programme." A quarter of a century elapsed, however, 
before the beginning of real missionary work among the 
Indians; and meanwhile much blood had been shed; 
though the Puritans had in the main dealt fairly with 
the Indians at the outset, their treacherous fears had 
been excited by occasional ill-treatment, "mainly at the 
hands of other settlers," and they fell to perpetrating 
great atrocities against the colonists, who, moved by a 
sense of their perilous situation and of the base char- 
acter of the savages, slaughtered them in great numbers. 
But alongside this conflict, a noble missionary work 
was in progress. John EHot was born in 1604, of parents 
by whom, to use his own words, "his first years were 
seasoned with the fear of God, the word and prayer." 
He was educated with unusual thoroughness, particularly 
in the languages, at Cambridge. Having, in the course of 
time, decided to devote himself to the ministry, and being 
a non-conformist, he came to America to escape the 
tyranny of Laud. He had promised some of his brethren 
who thought of coming to America that if they came he 
would be their pastor. On his arrival, 1631, he supplied 
for a time the Boston Church. In 1632, the brethren who 
had exacted the promise, came over and settled at Rox- 
bury. Mr. Eliot at once became their pastor and con- 
tinued in the relation sixty years. Soon after settling 
in Roxbury, he became deeply interested in the Indians, 



Protestant and Reformed Churches 139 

and resolved to learn their language that he might preach 
to them. He soon became able to translate the ten com- 
mandments, the Lord's Prayer, some texts of Scripture, 
and a few prayers. He was able to begin his preaching 
visits to the Indian camps as early as October, 1646. He 
rapidly gained in influence amongst the Indians. Wish- 
ing to civilize as well as Christianize them, he gathered 
those who were disposed to follow him into a community 
on their old camping ground, about five miles from Bos- 
ton, and called the place Nonantum. He drew them with 
great tact and skill toward a civilized life. A civil ad- 
ministration was founded. The General Court of Massa- 
chusetts founded a court for them over which an English 
magistrate presided. Native religious workers were 
trained also. Several Sachems within a radius of sixty 
miles from Roxbury besought Eliot's services in rapid 
succession. He responded as he could to their calls 
amidst great hardships. In 1648, Christians in England 
were so stirred that ''about seventy English and Scotch 
clergymen, mostly Presbyterians" united in a petition to 
the "Long Parliament," that something might be done 
for the "extension of the Gospel in America and the 
West Indies." This evoked from the Long Parliament a 
manifesto in favor of missions, which was to be read in 
all the Churches of the land, and which called for con- 
tributions to foreign missions. In the next year, 1649, 
the Parliament incorporated "The Society for the Pro- 
pagation of the Gospel in New England." This society 
sent Eliot fifty pounds per annum to supplement his 
salary. 

He had long desired to gather his converts at one 
place. With his desire they sympathized. Generous aid 
from England and the colonial government enabled him 



140 Introduction to Christian Missions 

to carry out this desire in 1650. A site was chosen on 
the Charles River, eighteen miles from Boston, and a 
tract of 6,000 acres set apart and named Natick. With 
the exception of one tribe, all the praying Indians were 
gathered here. He now began to train native preachers 
and teachers. In 1660, he formed the converts into a 
Church. Meanwhile, converts in other quarters' had been 
won. As they could not be carried to Natick, no less 
than thirteen other towns of praying Indians were 
formed. In 1674, he had under his immediate care 1,100 
converts. In King Philip 's War they suffered from both 
Indians and whites. 

In this great work he had been moved by ( i ) a desire 
to glorify God in the conversion of some of these poor 
souls; (2) love for them as blind and ignorant men; and 
(3) a sense of duty to fulfill the promise given in the 
royal charter of the colony. He had done his work 
largely in accordance with the Bible principles, and by 
the simple use of God's word, preached, lived and trans- 
lated into the Indian tongue. A most important part 
of his work was the translation of the Bible, which he 
was enabled to publish by the aid of the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel in New England^ the New 
Testament, in 1661, and the Old Testament in 1663. He 
also translated and composed other works' of value in the 
interest of his converts. He set others to doing similar 
missionary work, — notably the Mayhews throughout 
four generations. 

Eliot's mission was closer to the apostolic ideal in 
motive, aim, principles, instruments and methods than 
any other mission of the period. It began a voluntary 
mission by a Puritan minister, who had been exiled by 
the State-Church of England; secured the sympathy of 



Dawn of Protestant Missions 141 

Presbyterian and Independent Puritans in England, who 
appealed for personal contribution to support the work 
and organized a society to further the support. That is, 
it began in that part of the Reformed Church between 
which and the State the connection was weakest, and 
where the dependence for support on the State was least 
keenly felt. Naturally, we shall find, in the sequel, that 
Dissenters, because cut off from the State, came more 
easily and freely to the full sense of the missionary obli- 
gation ; and, other things being equal, took to heart more 
easily the apostolic missionary ideals.* 

II. The Dawn of Modern Missions, i 648-1 781. 
During the first half century of this period, in the 
Lutheran world it continued to be the prevailing view 
that world-wide missions were a privilege of the Apostles 
alone; and that in the different ages of the world since 
the time of Adam, God had been preached everywhere. 
Theologians attempted to prove these positions from 
Scripture. But it was held that it belonged to the civil 
powers, which in any way had come to have non-Chrfs- 
tians under their sway, to establish the true religion 
amongst them, build Churches and schools and appoint 
preachers, so that everywhere the true knowledge of 
God should be spread. This position was sometimes 
maintained by a reference to the example of the kings' of 
Israel. 

How long the theological leaders of Germany would 
have maintained this wall of prejudice no man can say; 
but men were coming forward from the ranks of the 
laymen who should lay trains for its effectual under- 

* The quotations in this chapter are for the most part from 
Warneck's History of Protestant Missions to which I acknowl- 
edge my great indebtedness. 



142 Introduction TO Christian Missions 

mining. The first to come forward was Baron Justinian 
von Weltz. He was actuated by two great desires: (i) 
One was for the uplift of the Christian life. (2) The 
other was for a practical manifestation of that life by 
an effort to extend the Gospel to the non-Christian world. 
He regarded genuine Christian life and effort to extend 
the Gospel universally as intimately related. 

In 1664 he published two pamphlets. The first of 
these bore the title, "A Christian and Loyal Exhortation 
to All Faithful Christians of the Augsburg Confession 
concerning a Special Society, through which with the 
help of God, our Evangelical Religion may he Extended, 
by Justinian. Put into print for notification — (i) To all 
evangelical rulers; (2) to barons and nobles; (3) to 
doctors, professors, and preachers; (4) to students' 
chiefly of theology; (5) to students also of law and medi- 
cine; (6) to merchants and all hearts that love Jesus." 
The second pamphlet was, ^^An Invitation to the Ap- 
proaching Great Supper and Proposal for a Christian 
Society of Jesus Having for its Object the Betterment 
of Christendom and the Conversion of Heathendom af- 
fectionately set forth by Justinian/' He laid these treat- 
ises before the "Body of Evangelicals," at the imperial 
diet of Ratisbon, which was charged with caring for the 
interest of Protestants. But after some discussion the 
memorial was simply laid on the table. This treatment 
evoked a third treatise, viz. : ''A Repeated Loyal and 
Earnest Reminder and Admonition to Undertake the 
Conversion of Unbelieving Nations. To all Evangelical 
Rulers, Clergymen and Jesus-loving Hearts, set forth by 
Justinian.'' 

In these treatises von Weltz gives a convincing refu- 
tation of the arguments of the theologians against prac- 



Dawn of Protestant Missions 143 

tical mission work; and argues in favor of such work: 
(i) From the revealed "will of God to help all men and 
bring them to a knowledge of the truth (i Tim. ii. 4). 
(2) From the example of godly men, who in every cen- 
tury since the apostolic age have, regardless of cost, ex- 
tended the Gospel among non-Christian races. (3) From 
the petition in the liturgy that God would lead the erring 
to the knowledge of the truth and enlarge his kingdom; 
and (4) from the example of the Papists in founding 
the society De Propaganda Fide. He asked the Church 
such questions as' the following: "Is it right to keep the 
Gospel to ourselves ? Is it right that students of theology 
should be confined to home parishes? Is it right that 
Christians should spend so much on clothing, eating and 
drinking, and should take no thought to spread the Gos- 
pel ?" He sets, in the last treatise, "the high and honored 
court preachers, venerable superintendents, learned pro- 
fessors," before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, and 
asks them, "Who gave you authority to misinterpret the 
commandment of Christ in Matthew xxviii. ?" He urged 
the establishment in every Protestant university of a 
missionary college of three professors', — one of Oriental 
language, one of methods of converting the heathen, and 
one of geography, beginning with Paul's journeys. 

AU his agitation was without practical results in his 
own day. In disappointment he received consecration, 
laid aside his' title, and went himself a missionary to 
Dutch Guiana, there soon to fill a lonely grave. 

The Germany of his day found hopeless obstacles 
in the way of evangelizing the heathen; regarded the 
heathen as "dogs and swine," and because of having 
failed to keep the Gospel which had been preached to 
them, outside the pale of God's evangelizing agencies; 



144 Introduction to Christian Missions 

and adjudged von Weltz a "dreamer." These views were 
voiced by Joh, Heinrich Ursinus, "superincendent" of 
Ratisbon, who was appealed to for an opinion on the 
missionary projects of von Weltz, by the "Body of Evan- 
gelicals" at Ratisbon. That an obligation rested on any 
save the civil power to do any evangelizing amongst 
heathen Ursinus could not see. But by his agitation and 
by his heroic example of self-sacrifice, von Weltz was to 
stir Germany of a later date. "Except a corn of wheat 
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it 
die it bringeth forth much fruit." In every generation 
since his day men have arisen in increasing numbers to 
voice his desires in a more or less complete way. Thus' 
we find Spener teaching that the obligation "rests on 
the whole Church to have care as to how the Gospel shall 
be preached in the whole world, and thus may continually 
be carried to other places whither it has not yet come 
and that to this end no diligence, labor, or cost be spared 
in such work on behalf of the poor heathen and unbe- 
lievers." We find him mourning over the fact that great 
Christian potentates show little concern in the matter 
and that Protestants are put to shame by the Papists. 
Other Pietists voice still more vigorously their sense of 
the obligation resting on the Church to be missionary. 
God stirred up the great philosopher Leibnitz, through 
his' intercourse with Jesuit missionaries to project the 
sending of thoroughly trained Lutheran missionaries to 
China, by way of Russia. These and other projects of 
the early part of the eighteenth century fell to the 
ground for want of support ; but they were important 
parts' of the long agitation necessary to arouse sleep- 
ing Christendom. 

Pietism was now at work. Living, personal, prac- 



Dawn of Protestant Missions 145 

tical Christianity was magnified. Pietism looked not for 
faith merely but for faith working by love. Seeking for 
fruitfulness in good works, and having its attention di- 
rected to the non-Christian world, it was bound in time 
to become subject to the missionary call. The Pietistic 
movement issued in the Danish-Halle Mission in 1705. 
Francke, the great pietist of his generation, which was 
after that of Spener, did more than any other man of 
the time, to beget the missionary spirit, find missionaries', 
and create congregations in the fatherland who would by 
their contributions support them. The initiative of the 
King of Denmark would have been fruitless without the 
aid of a Francke. Overburdened with his work at home, 
dependent for the support of his orphanage and other 
institutions on the free-will offering of Christians, 
Francke nevertheless felt himself in debt to the heathen 
to give them the Gospel. He made himself board of 
managers, secretary, apologist and everything that was 
needed for the mission cause. 

Under the Danish-Halle auspices many noble mission- 
aries have gone out. Under them Ziegenbalg and Plut- 
schau founded the famous Tamil missions in which much 
good was accomplished. After some years' Plutschau 
was driven back to Europe. Ziegenbalg died at the age 
of thirty-six, in 1719, leaving "a complete Tamil Bible, 
a dictionary, a mission seminary and schools," 355 con- 
verts, and a great number of catechumens. Amongst his 
successors was Christian Friedrich Schwartz (1726- 
1789) J — 3. man so noble in character and achievements 
that he deserves more than passing mention. 

At twenty he left his home for a career which closed 
with the words : "I am now at the brink of eternity, but 
to this moment, I declare that I do not repent of having 



146 Introduction to Christian Missions 

spent forty-three years in the service of the Divine Mas- 
ter. Who knows' but that God may remove some of the 
great obstacles to the propagation of the Gospel ? Should 
a reformation take place among Europeans, it would no 
doubt be the greatest blessing to this country." Owing 
to the peace and protection afforded him by the British 
East India Company, Schwartz was enabled to lay the 
foundations for the native Church in Southern India, 
which is now said to number half a million. He estab- 
lished a scheme of Christian vernacular schools, sup- 
ported by the Raja, his ward, and by the British Gov- 
ernment, later on. Having foreseen the famine of about 
1780, he stored rice against the evil day, and was a great 
benefactor in that time of want. It is hard to name, in 
all the glorious pages of modern history, a man of more 
venerable and apostolic character, or one more in the 
esteem of all who knew him, whether heathen or Chris- 
tian, — a fact mutely set forth at the west end of the 
Tanjore Fort Church, in Flaxman's' monument of 
Schwartz dying, with the loving Guericke, his faithful 
Christian friend and fellow-laborer, standing at his head, 
and the heathen but devoted Raja Serfoje holding the 
dying saint's hand. 

Next after the Danish-Halle missionary enterprise 
comes, in the Lutheran sphere, that of the Danish and 
Norwegian missions' to the Lapps and to Greenland, 171 6 
to 1 72 1, and following. 

It was through the Moravians, at first a society with- 
in the Lutheran Church, that missions took their most 
decided step forward, prior to the end of this period. 
This society seems to have been prepared of the Lord 
for missions. Zinzendorf, its early head, had come as 
a boy to Francke for training — had heard there tidings 



Dawn of Protestant Missions 147 

of the Lord's cause throughout the earth as he could 
have heard them nowhere else ; had formed acquaintance 
with Ziegenbalg and other missionaries; had been fired 
by Francke's own consecration ; had early pledged himself 
to the labor of spreading the Gospel throughout the 
world, — a pledge which it was his pleasure to renew from 
time to time. He had an extraordinary capacity for lead- 
ership, for impressing men with his ideals, his ambitions, 
and his self-sacrifice, and inducing them to go anywhere 
and endure any hardship at his bidding. Amongst the 
brethren who had migrated for the sake of their faith 
from the land of their nativity to Zinzendorf's estate 
were men of the stuff to make heroic missionaries, — men 
ready to work as slaves with negroes in order to teach 
them, — men ready to brave the most adverse conditions. 
The contagion of Zinzendorf's faith and consecration 
seized these men. The missionaries began to go out as 
early as 1732, following as they supposed the openings 
of Providence; and in the next score of years they 
planted more missions than all the rest of Protestantism 
in its first two centuries'; and they have never relaxed in 
their missionary zeal down to this day. They have 
planted and maintained missions on the most forlorn, 
the most hopeless and the most inhospitable shores of all 
the continents, and of their numbers three-fifths are 
found on the foreign fields. 

Much may be said in dispraise of the character of 
Moravian missionary work, as also of that of the piet- 
ists. Their missions were small, they undertook too 
many for the force at their command, they were com- 
monly in the hands of uncultured, uneducated and un- 
trained men. They were in behalf of tribes often the 
most obscure and savage, unfit material for the noblest 



148 Introduction to Christian Missions 

types of Christians. Few of them were in behalf of a 
people which, if won, would have influenced greatly the 
rest of the world for Christ. But after all dispraise has 
been spoken it must still be said that the little body of 
Moravians has done a noble service in the cause of mis- 
sions. It has illustrated the sympathy of Christ in it 
for suffering man in his most unlovely forms. It has 
exhibited a pure and steadfast devotion to the cause in 
the presence of an infidel world. In the faces of the 
great Churches of the world, long stalking in Pharisaic 
pride, it went out to the travellers fallen amongst thieves 
and did the part of the good Samaritan. It became a 
missionary centre without thought of colonial interest 
and without connection with political powers, from purely 
religious motives. 

But they had no large following. Dead orthodoxy 
was succeeded in Germany by the reign of Rationalism, 
which neither understood nor cared for missions. 

In the Calvinistic sphere less of actual achievement 
is seen between 1648 and 1780; but the dawn of a 
brighter morning is nevertheless visible. 

In Holland, indeed, the first zeal of the State Mis- 
sions had decayed. They had long been growing more 
mechanical. With the coming of Rationalism, mission- 
ary duty to the colonies was forgotten, or discharged in 
a very external and incompetent fashion by colonial 
clergymen. The native congregations generally went to 
decay. Mohammedanism was increasingly countenanced 
for political reasons; and to the point of intolerance to 
the spread of Christianity. 

The British had now come into command of the sea 
and of colonial and other interests which opened the 
way for evangelizing the heathen, — particularly in North 



Dawn OF Protestant Missions 149 

America, in the East Indies and in Western Africa. But 
England was now wanting in pervasive and earnest piety. 
The overthrow of the Commonwealth and the restoration 
of the Stuarts was the occasion of an incoming flood of 
immorality and infidelity. Deism of three different 
types — intellectual, materialistic, and skeptical poured its 
floods of hostile literature from the presses. The pulpits 
of the established churches for the most part altogether 
ceased to preach the doctrines of grace. They preached 
ethics merely and in so colorless a way that it was difli- 
cult, according to Blackstone, to tell whether the ethics 
were Confucian, Mohammedan, or Christian. The Dis- 
senters were at once infected with the new philosophical 
views to no small extent, and so depressed, that they ex- 
erted no adequate corrective. In Scotland, though mat- 
ters were not so bad as they were in England, Moder- 
atism obtained large sway. 

Before the British Christians could become mission- 
ary they had to be revived. Toward the end of the 
fourth decade of the eighteenth century that revival 
came. It came not through the literary work of those, 
such as Bishop Butler, who gave themselves to the refu- 
tation of Deism in one or another of its aspects, but by 
a baptism from heaven. God raised up the Wesleys, 
Whitefield and their helpers, taught them through the 
German Pietists and Moravians; and let them into a 
living experience of salvation and stirred through them, 
in the course of the next half century, the British and 
American world — one of the most beneficent movements 
of which history gives an account. Thus the Church was 
being Hfted to a pitch of piety necessary in order to 
evangelical missions'. 

Meanwhile, as early as the middle of the eighteenth 



150 Introduction to Christian Missions 

century, the Quakers began to show some degree of mis- 
sionary zeal. Fox writes in his epistles: "All Friends, 
everywhere, that have Indians or blacks, you are to preach 
the Gospel to them, and other servants, if ye be true 
Christians, for the Gospel of salvation was to be preached 
to every creature under heaven." About 1661, several 
of his followers went on missions to the East, but without 
permanent results. A little later William Penn tried to 
secure the evangelization of the Indians in his colony. 

In 1 701, "The Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts," was organized. It was orig- 
inally intended for work in the British colonies in North 
America. It never grew strong in the course of this 
period; but made some converts amongst Indians and 
negroes in North America. English Christians amongst 
whom Francke's writings had circulated gave consider- 
able support to Danish-Halle missionaries. 

In 1709, there was formed at Edinburgh a "Society 
in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge," 
which did some work amongst American Indians, after 
1 710. David Brainherd, one of their missionaries, 
labored amongst the Delaware Indians, in Pennsylvania, 
between 1742 and 1747. He was an American by birth, 
of no great learning, and accomplished no wide-spread 
results on his field; but he kept a journal in which he 
records his mistakes, shortcomings, regrets, along with 
his longing after God, and desires to glorify Him through 
the salvation of poor savages. That journal was edited 
and the life of its author written, by Jonathan Edwards, 
with the result that Edwards himself became a mission- 
ary to the Indians at Stockbridge. To these memoirs, 
Henry Martin traced his decision to become a mission- 
ary. To them William Carey was' indebted for impulses 



Dawn of Protestant Missions 151 

to the choice of mission work and for principles on which 
he behaved as a missionary. Brainherd, with Edwards 
to present him, was epochal. 

At his death the English-speaking people were being 
stirred graciously by the Methodist revival, into a living 
piety. They had long ago come into close political ana 
commercial touch with the multitudinous heathen peoples. 
Persons here and there had come to feel their personal 
obligation as Christians to concert measures for the evan- 
gelization of the world. Things were converging toward 
a new era. A leader for that new era would be born 
within a score of years. 

Meantime, God had not only been preparing a mis- 
sionary party; but had been preparing the ways' for that 
party — preparing highways for His own movements 
amongst heathen peoples. Many instances might be given. 
We shall present a few such instances' — that seen in the 
work of the British East India Company, and some 
others. This company, under the Providence of God, in- 
cidentally aided in no inconsiderable way the cause of 
missions. At first the directors' professed the desire to 
Christianize the nations. They provided their central 
factories with chaplains. Many of the governors were 
good Christian men and did much to help on the evan- 
gelization of the natives. Indeed, most of the governors 
seem to have been favorable to missions, up to 1792. 
They protected the Danish-Halle missionaries, amongst 
whom we have noticed Schwartz. What the company 
had in this way done for missions was off-set, however, 
by the deportment of many of its employees; and about 
1790, the company itself came to fear the missionary 
enterprise, lest it should, in enlightening and Christian- 
izing the people, injure its own financial interests. In 



152 Introduction to Christian Missions 

the new charter of 1792, the following clause was re- 
fused: 'That it is the peculiar and bounden duty of 
the British legislature to promote by all just and prudent 
means, the interest and happiness of the inhabitants of 
the British dominions in India; and that for these ends 
such measures ought to be adopted as may gradually tend 
to their advancement in useful knowledge, and to their 
religious and moral comfort." This could not be form- 
ally adopted till the charter of 181 3, and was not carried 
out practically till 1833. For the next forty years after 
1792 the company was unfriendly to missions. It forced 
William Carey in 1799 to find an asylum in Serampore, 
the little settlement of Denmark, and kept up this spirit 
for the next thirty years. It was nevertheless doing, 
under the overruling providence of God and without 
friendly intention on its own part, much for the cause 
of missions. The real missionary influence of this great 
company was like that of the ancient Roman empire, in 
the early history of the spread of Christianity. It res- 
cued from anarchy and reduced to order all southern 
India. It introduced roads, commerce, wealth, and it 
aroused the conscience of Great Britain and Europe by 
its very opposition to missions in the first quarter of the 
nineteenth century. It thus worked under the all-ruling 
and gracious providence of God just as ancient Rome 
had done. 

God had set geographical discoveries again in the 
forefront, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
and He was to keep them there for more than one hun- 
dred years. Through them he was to quicken more and 
more curiosity about an interest in the inhabitants' of the 
lands discovered, and to lead to missionary endeavor in 
their behalf. This, subsequent history has proven; 



Dawn of Protestant Missions 153 

for as Livingstone has said, ''the end of the work of 
geography has become the beginning of missionary- 
enterprise." 

With this was' combined an age of invention. To 
anticipate, it issued in new means of communication, rail- 
ways, steamships, telegraphic systems, bringing the world 
down to the dimensions of a neighborhood by making it 
so easy to pass from place to place. Moreover, nations, 
peoples, and tribes of the earth were beginning to come 
together for commercial reasons as never before. 

The new conception of the political rights and na- 
tural rights of men was finding voice in the struggle of 
the American colonies for independence, and in their 
teaching — a movement which God would use to bring 
His Church to a clearer conception of the religious rights 
of the nations, and of the right of the heathen to the 
Gospel which long back he had commanded the Church 
to give to all the world. 

At such an epoch there was need for a leader. 



LECTURE VIII. 

The Age of Voluntary Missionary Societies, 
1781-1829. 

William Carey was born in Northamptonshire, 
England, August 17, 1761. He was the son of a 
weaver, but at the age of sixteen he was apprenticed 
to a shoemaker at Hackleton. By baptism he was a 
member of the Established Church, but became con- 
zinced of the Scripturalness of Baptist views and con- 
nected himself with that communion and became a 
Baptist preacher. After having preached at Paulers- 
pury, his early home, and at Barton, he became, 1786, 
the pastor of the Baptist Church at Moulton. As the 
congregation was very poor, to support himself, he 
taught school by day, cobbled shoes by night, and 
preached on the Sabbath to his people. Having an in- 
tense desire for education and knowledge notwith- 
standing his poverty, he learned, before he was thirty- 
one years of age, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, French, 
and had acquired vast stores of general knowledge in 
the spheres of science, history, voyages ; and had the 
best command of the religious condition of the world 
of his day, of all the men of his century. Stirred by 
the voyages of Captain Cook, by Jon. Edwards' 
Memoirs of David Brainherd, and of God-given desires 
for the salvation of the heathen, from about 1781, when 
only about twenty years of age, he had pressed upon 
all who came within his reach, the obligation to mis- 
sions. This year accordingly, may well be called the 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 155 

birth year of modern missions — a year as significant in 
its way as the year 15 17 was in its way. In 1786, at a 
conference of Baptist preachers, he submitted as a 
matter of discussion the subject: ''Whether the com- 
mandment given to the apostles to teach all nations in 
all the world must not be recognized as binding on 
us also, since the great promise still follows it." The 
president, however, bade him to be silent, declaring, 
"You are a miserable enthusiast to propose such a 
question. Nothing certainly can come to pass in this 
matter before a new Pentecost accompanied by new 
gifts of miracles and tongues promises success to the 
commission of Christ as in the beginning." Carey 
turned to the press. He published, in 1792, "An In- 
quiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means 
for the Conversion of the Heathen ;" a work which was 
to have vast influence. He followed this by his famous 
sermon, on Isaiah liv. 2, 3, with the two mottoes, "Ex- 
pect great things from God and attempt great things 
for God," the effect of which was so profound that he 
was enabled to found "The Particular (Calvinistic) 
Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the 
Heathen," October 2, 1792. 

Carey had fixed his desires upon work in Tahiti, 
or Western Africa, but he offered to go wherever the 
Society might choose. The Society fixed upon India. 
In June, 1793, with Mr. John Thomas, who had re- 
sided in Bengal and engaged in missionary work, Carey 
and his family sailed for India. Owing to the opposi- 
tion of the East India Company, the party had been 
forced to sail in a foreign vessel. They reached Cal- 
cutta, November 11, 1793. Carey believed that it was 
the duty of the missionary, after receiving some help 



156 Introduction TO Christian Missions 

at first, to support himself. Accordingly he very soon 
undertook self-support. He undertook it too quickly. 
Before he could reach the position of self-support, he 
and his family suffered the utmost privations. He 
left Calcutta, and walked fifteen miles in the sun, pass- 
ing through salt rivers and a large lake to the Sunder- 
bunds, a tract scantily populated, of inhospitable 
climate, and notorious for wild beasts and pestilences. 
He intended to support himself by farming and to 
teach the people. About seven months had passed, 
his heroic attempts looked as if they would result in 
death or madness, Mr. Udney, a pious man in the ser- 
vice of the East India Company, offered him the super- 
intendency of his indigo factory. The position would 
not only give him support for his family and time for 
study, but a congregation of natives connected with 
the factory. It was situated at Mudnabatty in the dis- 
trict of Malda. Carey accepted the position ; and spent 
five years there. There he learned the Bengali, wrote 
a Bengali grammar, and translated into that tongue 
the New Testament. He held daily religious services 
with the thousand workmen in the factory, he 
itinerated through the district, a territory twenty miles 
square, a very populous territory. He won some con- 
verts and amongst them some of effectiveness as 
Christian workers. He learned Sanskrit and the 
Botany of the region. He inspired other Europeans 
with his own heroic spirit to become his colleagues — 
such men as Marshman and Ward ; and kindled a flame in 
England and our country for mission work. In 1799 
in consequence of an inundation the factory was closed. 
Being again without means of support and handi- 
capped by the unfriendliness of the company, Mr. 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 157 

Carey seized an opportunity then providentially given 
to establish a mission in the Danish sphere of Seram- 
pore. Through the publication of his New Testament 
he was brought prominently before the Marquis of 
Wellesly, Governor General of India, who appointed 
him as Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi, in 
the newly established Fort William College, in Cal- 
cutta. He filled the position for thirty years. He did 
much to develop the knowledge of the natural history 
and botany of India. The publication of the entire 
Bible in Bengali was completed as early as 1809. When 
he died, in 1834, unaided or with the aid of others, he 
had made translations of the Bible in whole or in part, 
into twenty- four Indian languages. The Serampore 
press, under his oversight, had made the Bible acces- 
sible to above three hundred millions of human beings. 
He had prepared grammars and dictionaries of Mah- 
ratta, Sanskrit and Bengali. He had assisted in the 
establishment and maintainance of thirty separate 
large mission stations. He had labored for the aboli- 
tion of Suttee ; and seen it abolished in 1829. 

October 7, 1805, Carey, Marsham, and Ward, his 
great fellow-laborers in Serampore, had drawn up and 
signed a "Form of Agreement Respecting the Great 
Principles on which the Brethren of the Mission at Ser- 
ampore Think it their Duty to Act in the Work of In- 
structing the Heathen." "This agreement was read pub- 
licly at every station, at the three annual meetings on 
first Lord's day in January, in May, and in October." 
These principles include the following points: 

"(i) It is absolutely necessary that we set an infinite 
value on immortal souls; (2) that we gain all informa- 
tion of the snares and delusions in which these heathen 
are held; (3) that we abstain from those things which 



158 Introduction to Christian Missions 

would increase their prejudice against the Gospel; (4) 
that we watch all opportunities of doing good; (5) that 
we keep to the example of Paul and make the great sub- 
ject of our preaching Christ the crucified; (6) that the 
natives should have entire confidence in us and feel quite 
at home in our company ; (7) that we build up and watch 
over the souls that may be gathered; (8) that we form 
our native brethren to usefulness, fostering every kind 
of genius and cherishing every gift and grace in them ; 
especially advising the native churches to choose their 
pastors and deacons from among their own countrymen ; 
(9) that we labor with all our might in forwarding trans- 
lations of the sacred Scriptures in the languages of India, 
and that we establish native free schools and recommend 
these establishments to other Europeans; (10) that we 
be constant in prayer and the cultivation of personal reli- 
gion to fit us for the discharge of these laborious and 
unutterably important labors; let us often look at Brain- 
herd, in the woods of America, pouring out his very 
soul before God for the perishing heathen without whose 
salvation nothing could make him happy; (11) that we 
give ourselves up unreservedly to this glorious cause. 
Let us never think that our time, our gifts, our strength, 
our families, or even the clothes' that we wear, are our 
own. Let us sanctify them all to God and his cause. 
Oh, that He may sanctify us for His work ! No private 
family ever enjoyed a greater portion of happiness than 
we have done since we have resolved to have all things 
in common. If we are enabled to persevere, we may 
hope that multitudes of converted souls will have reason 
to bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel to 
this country." * 

* Copied from George Smith, Short History of Missions, pp. 
166, 167. 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 159 

These principles approximate the principles of the 
Apostolic Church. 

But Carey's great part in the mission movement of 
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' is not found in 
the number and consequence of the converts; nor in his 
numerous and valuable translations of Scripture; nor 
in his other literary services; nor in the eduction of 
relatively Bible principles for the conduct of missions; 
but in the arousing of Christians and groups of Chris- 
tians to a powerful sense of missionary obligation and 
missionary privilege, and, through these, and after a 
long period of resistance, the Churches of Christendom 
to a similar sense. 

As the Pietistic and Moravian missionary movement 
had to meet assaults from the orthodox Churches of the 
continent, so Carey and his' sympathizers had to run 
counter to the opposition of the Church authorities of 
Great Britain and America. Even among the Baptists, 
to whose communion he belonged, the majority of the 
leaders refused to take any part in missions. The Body 
of Bishops of the Established Church were hardly will- 
ing for the Churches to hear representatives of the mis- 
sion cause. The missionary effort was nicknamed "Meth- 
odism." It was thought to be a species of zeal without 
knowledge. The rationalism dominating the government 
of the Established Church and affecting the theology of 
all the Churches opposed the awakened life of faith, as 
an expression of arrogant fanaticism; and missions as 
extravagant, foolish and hopeless undertakings. The at- 
titude of the Established (Presbyterian) Church of Scot- 
land was not different. 

The ecclesiastic authorities holding this attitude of 
opposition, it became necessary for the friends of mis- 



i6o Introduction to Christian Missions 

sion enterprise to form societies independent of their 
Church organizations for the prosecution of mission work. 
Such societies' were suggested, probably, by the Moravian 
and Methodist bodies, which were societies inside estab- 
Hshed Churches during the earUer stages of their respec- 
tive histories'. It would be hardly possible to theorize 
such societies in a satisfactory way, where the Church 
itself was awake to the responsibility resting on it to be 
missionary. They set themselves to doing the work 
which God laid upon His Church, the body in covenant 
with Him. Their conduct is formal usurpation of the 
functions, powers and prerogatives of the Church. But 
this act of formal usurpation is, in spirit, not so. These 
members are, as desiring to obey the missionary com- 
mand truer to God and to rightful Church authority than 
the unfaithful ecclesiastical powers that oppose them 
and do not the work enjoined. 

The first great effect on the Protestant Christendom 
of Europe and America produced by the life of Mr. 
Carey in India was seen, then, in the rise of the numerous 
voluntary societies for the advancement of the mission- 
ary cause. 

The London Missionary Society, founded in 1795, 
was the immediate result of Mr. Carey's heroic early 
course in India. Two out of three of the men who 
brought about the formation of this society were inspired 
to the undertaking on hearing the first letters of Carey 
and Thomas read by Dr. Ryland, of Bristol, who had 
invited them to hear them. It was catholic in its con- 
stitution, and, in design, composed of "evangelical min- 
isters and lay brethren of all denominations." It was 
largely assisted at the outset by Presbyterians' and Epis- 
copalians; but in the course of time has come to be the 



Voluntary Missionary Societies i6i 

organ of the English Congregationalists. It has sent 
forth many great missionaries, pioneers and founders: 
Robert Morrison, a son of a Scotch Presbyterian elder, 
brought up as a last and boot-tree maker, becoming a 
scholar, was sent to China, landing at Canton, September 
7, 1807. He labored under the greatest difficulties till 
1809, when he was engaged as Chinese translator by the 
East India Company, at a salary of 500 pounds a year. 
This position gave him a legally recognized standing, 
enabled him to go about freely, and interfered little with 
his great purpose. He compiled his grammar of the 
Chinese, and his great dictionary, and translated the 
Scriptures'. He thus gave weapons to the Protestant mis- 
sionaries, ready to hand, on the breaking down of the 
walls and their admission. 

John Williams, apprentice to an ironmonger, con- 
verted at the age of eighteen, self-devoted to work in 
the South Seas, was sent out in 18 16, to the South Sea 
Islands. Making, after a little, Raiatea, the largest of 
the Society Islands, his centre, he enjoyed remarkable 
success in Christianizing and civilizing the people. In 
1823, he instituted work in the Hervey Islands, and met 
with similar success. In successive years he explored 
many groups of islands. He visited the Samoan Islands 
in 1830, and again in 1832, when, under the good hand of 
God, he made an amazing conquest of the people for 
Christ. He perished at the hands' of the savages of 
Erromanga, whither he had gone to establish a mission 
in 1838. He had been evangelist, pastor, teacher, trans- 
lator, and civil adviser and setter of social ideals for his 
peoples. 

Robert Moffat, trained as' a gardener, but devoting 
himself to the mission cause, was, after a term spent in 



i62 Introduction to Christian Missions 

special study, sent to South Africa in 1817. He sounded 
out the Gospel, during over fifty years of service, 
throughout all South Africa, giving to peoples whom he 
found in rankest savagery the entire Bible in their own 
tongue which he had turned into a literary vehicle. He 
bad developed in them some power to appreciate the ways 
of civilized life. 

David Livingstone, ex-cotton piecer, trained himself 
in medicine and divinity, and would have gone as a medi- 
cal missionary to China; but was sent to Africa, in 1841. 
He opened Central Africa to commerce, division into 
spheres of influence, civilization and Christianity. The 
greatest explorer of modern times, to all solicitation to 
drop his missionary character he was ready with the 
answer that he could be an explorer only in a secondary 
sense. As a pioneer of mission forces he would ''do 
geograpliy by the way." 

Through these and a host of men and women less 
well known, the London Missionary Society has done a 
great work, in Polynesia, in South Africa, in Central 
Africa, in North India, in South India, in Travancore, 
in China, in Madagascar, and elsewhere. It had in these 
fields in 1904, 80,000 communicants, about four times' as 
many adherents; powerful and efficient religious plants 
in the most of these fields ; and an income of $720,000.00. 

The next societies to spring into being and into work 
were the Scottish missionary societies', — the "Edinburgh 
Missionary Society," which came into existence in 1796, 
and the Glasgow Missionary Society of the same date. 
These were due to Mr. Carey's influence and to the ex- 
ample of the men who had established the London Mis'- 
sionary Society. They were of a similar catholic con- 
stitution. The members were in part from the Estab- 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 163 

lished Church and in part from the secession churches. 
After some fruitless efforts elsewhere the Edinburgh So- 
ciety, which was known as the "Scottish Missionary So- 
ciety/' transferred its efforts' to India, in 1822 — beginning 
a mission remarkable for the labors of Robert Nesbit 
and John Wilson, D. D. In 1821, also after some dis- 
appointing enterprises, the Glasgow Society began in 
Kafraria a mission which prospered greatly under the 
Free and United Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, and 
is doing so now under the control of the United Free 
Church. 

Both the Edinburgh and Glasgow societies, after the 
Scotch Church had come to the consciousness of itself 
as a God-ordained missionary society, came to think of 
themselves as not needed and as out of place. Their 
work was all turned over, in the course of some decades, 
to the Church in one or the other of its branches. 

The Church Missionary Society was founded under 
the name of the "Society for Missions to Africa and the 
East," in 1799. It has ever been the organ of the noblest 
and most catholic part of the Church of England. It 
has outgrown all the British societies. Among its notable 
secretaries have been Thomas Scott, the commentator, 
Josiah Pratt and Henry Venn. The society waited four- 
teen years' for the sanction of bishops. Till 1813, Ger- 
man Lutherans only could be secured as missionaries. 
In 1841, two archbiships and several bishops joined the 
society. With varying fortunes the society has grown 
with the passing years. In 1904, its income was 400,000 
pounds, or $1,920,000.00. The society's missions, be- 
ginning in West Africa, 1804, in Madras in 18 14, and in 
Calcutta, in 1820, extend around the world and include 
missions in Africa, in Palestine, in Turkish Arabia, in 



164 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Persia, in India, in Ceylon, in China, in Japan, in New 
Zealand, in Northeast Canada, and in British Columbia. 
In 1902 they had on the roll of communicants 79,586. 

The Wesleyan Missionary Society was organized as 
early as 18 13, and soon afterwards had missions in 
America, the West Indies, Ceylon, and, a little later, in 
South Africa, in South India, later still in South China, 
and Australia, — many of which have been very fruitful. 
During the earlier stages this enterprise was in the hands 
of Dr. Thomas Coke, one of John Wesley's greatest lieu- 
tenants, and one who was imbued with a missionary spirit 
as early as Mr. Carey himself. 

The Society for the Propogation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts, chartered in 1701, became a distinct mis- 
sionary agency as early as 1821. Founded largely for 
the promotion of the Christian religion in "our foreign 
possessions," it had been making grants for some time 
in the support of missionary work. It has continued to 
combine the pastoral care of English colonists with its 
missionary functions. It has become the organ of the 
Ritualistic, or High Church party in the Church of Eng- 
land. It has branches' in many quarters of the earth ; and 
because of its emphasis upon the Episcopate and its' re- 
garding itself as the representative of "the Church," it 
has been characterized by an absence of comity in dealing 
with the representatives of other Churches and societies. 
Its' arrogance has caused much confusion, placed it on 
an unfriendly footing with Protestant Churches and so- 
cieties, and played into the hands of Rome. Inasmuch 
as the society confuses in its accounts, its expenditures, 
etc., on British colonists and on heathen peoples, it is 
hardly practicable to say what the society is doing for 
distinctly missionary work. 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 165 

The erection, or use, of all these British societies for 
distinctly missionary work is traceable to the influence of 
William Carey more than to that of any other man. His 
influence was not apparent in Britain alone. It appears 
in America. 

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions was formed in 18 10. The influence of Eliot, 
Brainherd and Jonathan Edwards which had affected 
Mr. Carey, was repaid in the influence of Mr. Carey on 
America. Adoniram Judson and Samuel J. Mills, stu- 
dents in divinity in Williams College and Andover Sem- 
inary, started an agitation which led to the foundation of 
this society. Mills is credited with having originated the 
plan of the American Board. This board was formed 
by Congregationalists, it became a joint agency of Con- 
gregationalists and Presbyterians in 18 12, the Congrega- 
tionalists remaining, however, the dominant party. After 
the separation between the old and new school people of 
the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 
the board lost the support of the old school wing, and 
on the reunion of these parties in 1870, the support of 
the new school wing. In 1857, the board had lost the 
support of the Dutch Reformed Church ; in 1858 the sup- 
port of the Associate Reformed Church ; and in 1865 that 
of the German Reformed ; so that, since 1870, the Board 
has practically represented Congregationalists alone. Ac- 
cording to its constitution it has no ecclesiastical charac- 
ter, and no organic connection with any Church or body 
of Churches, and is amenable to no authority except that 
of the Massachusetts' Legislature, and to that only in 
case of violating the terms of its charter. 

Beginning with the Marathi Mission in Bombay, in 
18 1 3, the board has thrown its workers' into many parts 



i66 Introduction to Christian Missions 

of the world. It has done very notable work amongst the 
the corrupt Christian peoples of Turkey ; in the Hawaiian 
Islands, India, and China. As the Presbyterian Churches 
have withdrawn from its support, the board has turned 
over to them various of its" missions. In 1902, it received 
an income of $845,105.85, had on its roll of communi- 
cants as the fruit of mission effort, 55,645 names, and 
possessed fine plants consisting of churches, schools, col- 
leges, printing presses, and so forth. 

The American Baptist Missionary Society came into 
existence in 1814, owing to the fact that Messrs. Judson 
and Rice, sent out by the American Board, had changed 
their views on the mode of baptism, severed their con- 
nection with the board, and werejn need of support; it 
has grown greatly and carried on with great success" mis- 
sions in Burmah, amongst the Koreans, and amongst the 
Telugus of India ; it has successful missions' also in Siam 
and Assam, in China, in Japan, and elsewhere. It had 
in 1902, 111,650 converts in heathen lands, many schools 
of various grades', two of them being colleges, and seven 
of them theological and Bible schools. 

In addition to these missionary societies, William 
Carey's life was one of the great forces which helped 
to bring into being the Religious Tract Society, 1799, for 
the circulation of religious books and treatises' through- 
out the British dominions in foreign countries; and the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, in 1804, whose total 
issues of separate books of the Bible, entire New Testa- 
ments and entire Bibles', in the first ninety-eight years 
of its life were 175,038,965, and whose great editorial 
committee in the year 1902, considered matters bearing 
on versions of the Scripture in 151 languages and dialects; 
and the American Bible Society, 1816, which has pub- 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 167 

lished the Bible in whole, or in part, in more than eighty 
languages and dialects, and whose total issues, in 1902, 
were 1,993,558, of which 1,258,909 copies were distri- 
buted in foreign parts. 

Not only these but other missionary and subsidiary 
societies were formed between the year of the heroic 
venture of William Carey and the end of the first quarter 
of the ninteenth century. The rise of these societies was 
European and American Protestantism's response to the 
appeal of Mr. Carey and his fellow laborers in behalf of 
missions, in part. That which makes his life epochal in 
missions is not so much what he achieved on the mission 
field, we repeat, but the lesson he taught Protestanism — 
the lesson of enterprise, of daring, of duty, of heroic 
faith which no obstacle could weaken. He was indeed 
himself given in answer to prayer in behalf of the mis- 
sionary cause. For decades, here and there, Christians 
had been praying with increasing fervor for the salvation 
of the heathen. "As far back as 1744, some Scotch min- 
isters agreed to observe the first Tuesday in each month 
as a time of special prayer that God would bless all 
nations with the light of His glorious Gospel; and sent 
out a memorial on continuing concert of prayer to this 
end." "Five hundred copies of this memorial reached 
America, and helped the life of Brainherd to fire the 
heart of Jonathan Edwards, in 1746, to write his famous 
essay on concert in prayer, for the advancement of 
Christ's kingdom," which essay, in turn, stirred the hearts 
of English Baptists, and became one of the factors that 
moved Carey to offer himself as the mission worker. 

Carey no more caused the mission movements' which 
were so closely connected with his life than Luther 
caused the Reformation amongst the German people ; but 



i68 Introduction to Christian Missions 

as Luther led and accelerated the one movement so Carey 
led, accelerated and gave his own character to early nine- 
teenth century Protestant missions. In this way he was 
helping toward the awaking of more than individuals, 
and groups of individuals to a sense of their responsibility 
to be missionary. If the winning of religious toleration 
was a preparation to the winning of religious liberty in 
Virginia, in Colonial and Revolutionary days, so the 
excitation into being of great voluntary missionary socie- 
ties was a preparation for something much better for the 
awakening of the Churches of Christendom to a con- 
sciousness of the fact that God's Church is the God- 
ordained missionary society, and that every Christian in 
virtue of his Church membership is a member of a mis- 
sionary society, and as such is pledged to do his utmost 
for the disciplining of all nations. 

About the time of Mr. Carey's death the Churches 
begin to awaken to this conception of their nature, — 
begin to see that no Church which is not at bottom mis- 
sionary has a right to regard itself as having all the im- 
portant marks of a true Church. 

We shall attempt to trace the further awakening of 
Protestant Christendom in the next lecture — the awaken- 
ing of the Churches to the consciousness of their mis- 
sionary obligation as such. 

From the foregoing account of the Work of Mr. 
Carey and the rise of the voluntary societies", it has ap- 
peared that missions sprang up in the Calvanistic 
Churches just among those who had thrown out of their 
theory and practice the paralyzing connection of Church 
and State. Dissent had so far a truer theoretical grasp 
of Christianity; and God honored dissent by giving to 
Dissenters and to those in large sympathy with them, 



Voluntary Missionary Societies 169 

to institute and support, for the most part, the mission 
effort in Mr. Carey's age. 

The aim of the missionaries who followed in his' 
train — the Protestant missionaries of his age — was once 
more as in the apostolic age, to make spiritual disciples. 

The instruments' used by them were almost univer- 
sally the word — the word taught and the word lived. 
The Biblical principles to regulate missionary effort, 
which tell one upon whom to work, where to work, how 
to dispose the forces, in a strategic and tactical way, if 
apprehended, were not generally applied, perhaps because 
of the prevailing ignorance of the conditions of various 
heathen peoples. Of necessity these missionaries had to 
move largely in the dark. They were invading lands 
which they had to explore and report on in order to a 
better planned effort by their successors. Hence fiasco 
enterprises were not infrequent. 

They early put into application at least on some of 
the fields all the Biblical methods. The evangelistic was 
universal and the literary was hardly less general. The 
educational received a tentative trial on some important 
fields; the missionaries being divided as to the Biblical 
sanction of the method. The age of modern medical mis- 
sions certainly had not yet come. Such missionaries as 
were possessed of medical intelligence and great common- 
sense, occasionally used such knowledge and skill with 
helpful effects. But such occasional services were too 
infrequent and inconspicuous to take rank as a form of 
missionary endeavor. 

The workers who had gone out in this period, 1781- 
1729, were after all not many. 

They contained amongst them some men of undoubted 
parts, many men of heroic consecration, and some weak 



170 Introduction to Christian Missions 

and unworthy men. Many of them had insufficient train- 
ing and education for the onerous duties which devolved 
upon them. Many of them were not such men as the 
Churches should have sent. The Churches were not 
sending men. The voluntary societies were sending such 
as they could get. Taken as a whole, though, they were 
people of common-sense, pious and devoted; and with 
them, that God of all grace, whose prerogative it is to 
use the weak to accomplish the mightiest results, did 
great things. He was using them to show strong men 
the way; and to awaken strong men and multitudes not 
yet born to their duty to a perishing heathen world. 

In winning converts, signal triumphs were occasion- 
ally enjoyed, as by John Williams and his fellow- workers 
in the Society Islands and neighboring groups. But 
speaking generally, converts came in slowly and with 
great difficulty. It has been seen that the great heathen 
world was touched in not a few places. But it had been 
hardly more than touched. Africa lay unexplored as 
to its whole interior, in 1829, Japan, China, and Korea 
were tight shut, with Robert Morrison tolerated in Can- 
ton only because of his mercantile connections. Turkey 
was holding a sword over the heads' of the intruding 
representatives of the American Board, who had as yet 
been able to fix no permanent station. Nothing appar- 
ently worth while had been done in Australia, no per- 
manent mark made. The little white spots in India and 
Oceanica could be made to appear only on large maps of 
those countries. A great providential movement had 
begun, nevertheless. 



LECTURE IX. 

The Church Becoming Conscious of Itself as a 
Missionary Society. 

(1829 to the present.) 

To stir the Churches of Protestant Christendom to 
a proper sense of their missionary obligations, was a 
slow and difficult achievement. Even this was accomp- 
lished, in part, through the instrumentality of Mr. 
Carey and his helpers, fellow missionaries, and their 
successors and supporters. "Nothing succeeds like 
success." The success of the mission movement in- 
sured and brought about greater success. It became 
an effective instrumentality in the hands of the great 
Head of the Church, in awakening the Church to mis- 
sionary activity. As far back as 1796, two Synods of 
the Established Church of Scotland overturned the 
General Assembly of that Church touching missions to 
the heathen — the spreading abroad of the Gospel 
amongst heathenish and barbarous peoples. It was 
proposed to appoint "a, collection for missions." But 
the measure met the stoutest opposition. It was con- 
tended that "to spread abroad the knowledge of the 
Gospel amongst barbarous and heathen nations seems 
to be highly preposterous, in so far as philosophy and 
learning must in the nature of things take the prece- 
dence, and that while there remains at home a single 
individual without means of religious knowledge, to 
propagate it abroad would be improper and absurd." 



172 Introduction to Christian Missions 

It was also contended that the proposal to appoint a 
collection for missions "would no doubt be a subject 
for legal prosecution." There was as yet no prevail- 
ing apprehension that the Church is missionary accord- 
ing to its divinely given constitution. It took long years 
to arouse the Church of Scotland — "the first Protestant 
Church as such to send out a missionary" — to the ap- 
prehension of itself as a missionary society. But this 
was at length done ; and Alexander Duff was appointed 
its first missionary. 

Dr. Thomas Chalmers and Dr. Inglis had been lab- 
oring for some years to bring their Church to this posi- 
tion. Two sermons of Dr. Chalmers — one preached 
before the Dundee Missionary Society, on Missionaries 
and the Bible — as "the two great instruments ap- 
pointed for the propagation of the Gospel," and pub- 
lished in 1812; and the other preached in 1814 before 
the Scottish Propagation Society, on "The Utility of 
Missions Ascertained by Experience" — followed by 
Chalmers' personal influence at St. Andrews, are said 
to have sent Duff to India. Moving him to the same 
course, however, was the appeal of Dr. Inglis, made to 
the people of Scotland in the name of the Church, in 
1825. 

The example of the Church of Scotland illustrated 
and vindicated by tongue, by pen and by the divine 
blessing on its enterprise has had large influence over 
other Churches, and particularly over those having 
the Presbyterian form of government. 

The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
America, Old School, seems to have been the second 
Church to take the view that the Church itself is by 
the ordination of God a missionary society. Dr. John 



The Church a Missionary Society 173 

Holt Rice was one of the men who, under the hand 
of God, did much to arouse his Church to the fact that 
her missionary work was her great work. In 1831, 
Dr. Rice presented to the General Assembly of the 
undivided Presbyterian Church his famous overture, 
containing principles which the undivided Church 
would not indeed adopt; but which were destined to 
partial adoption by the Old School Assembly of 1837, 
and to increasing appropriation by the Church in its 
subsequent history down to the present. 

Dr. Rice's overture is as follows : 

"The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
North America, in organizing their form of govern- 
ment, and in repeated declarations made through her 
representatives in after times, have solemnly 
recognized the importance of the missionary cause, and 
their obligations as Christians to promote it by all the 
means in their power. But these various acknowledge- 
ments have not gone to the full extent of the obliga- 
tions imposed by the Head of the Church, nor have 
they produced exertions at all corresponding thereto. 
Indeed, in the judgment of this General Assembly, 
one primary and principal object of the institution of 
the Church by Jesus Christ, was not so much the sal- 
vation of the individual Christians — for *he that be- 
lieveth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved, — ^but 
the communicating, the blessings of the Gospel to the 
destitute with efficiency and united effort. The entire 
history of the Christian societies organized by the 
Apostles, affords abundant evidence that they so under- 
stood the design of the Master. They received of Him 
a command to ^preach the Gospel to every creature'; 
and from the Churches planted by them, the word of 



174 Introduction to Christian Missions 

the Lord was 'sounded out' through all parts of the 
civilized world. Nor did the missionary spirit of the 
primitive Churches expire until they had become se- 
cularized and corrupted by another spirit. And it is 
the decided belief of this General Assembly that a 
true revival of religion in any denomination of Chris- 
tians, will generally, if not universally, be marked by 
an increased sense of obligation to execute the com- 
mission which Christ gave the apostles. 

"The General Assembly would therefore in the most 
public and solemn manner express their shame and 
sorrow th^t the Church represented by them has done 
comparatively so little to make known the saving 
health of the Gospel to all nations. At the same time, 
they would express their grateful sense of the goodness 
of the Lord, in employing the instrumentality of others 
to send salvation to the heathen. Particularly would 
they rejoice at the divine favor manifested to the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions, whose perseverance, whose prudence, whose skill 
in conducting this most important interest, merit all 
praise, and excite the joy of all the Churches. With 
an earnest desire therefore, to co-operate with this 
noble institution ; to fulfill in some part, at least, their 
own obligations ; and to answer the just expectation of 
the friends of Christ in other denominations, and in 
other countries; in obedience also to what is believed 
to be the command of Christ. 

''Be it therefore, Resolved: i. That the Presbyte- 
rian Church in the United States is a Missionary So- 
ciety, the object of which is to aid in the conversion 
of the world • and that every member of the Church is 
a member for life of said Society, and bound in main- 



The Church a Missionary Society 175 

tenance of his Christian character to do all in his 
power for the accomplishment of this object. 

"2. That the ministers of the Gospel in connection 
with the Presbyterian Church in the United States, 
are hereby most solemnly required to present this sub- 
ject to the members of their respective congregations, 
using every effort to make them feel their obligations, 
and to induce them to contribute according to their 
ability. 

"3. That a committee of be appointed from year 

to year, by the General Assembly, to be designated, 
'The Committee of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States for Foreign Missions,' to whose man- 
agement this whole concern shall be confided with 
directions to report all their transactions to the 
Churches. 

"4. The Committee to have power to appoint a 
chairman, corresponding secretary, treasurer, and other 
necessary officers. 

"5. The Committee shall, as far as the nature of 
the case will admit, be co-ordinate with the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and 
shall correspond and co-operate with that association, 
in every possible way, for the accomplishment of the 
great objects which it has in view. 
^ ***** * 

"7. That every Church Session be authorized to 
receive contributions ; and be directed to state in their 
annual reports to Presbytery, distinctly the amount 
contributed by their respective Churches for Foreign 
Missions ; and that it be earnestly recommended to all 
Church Sessions, in hereafter admitting new members 
to the Churches, distinctly to state to candidates for 



176 Introduction to Christian Missions 

admission, that if they join the Church, they join a 
community the object of which is the conversion of 
the heathen world, and to impress on their minds a 
deep sense of their obligation, as redeemed sinners, to 
co-operate in the accomplishment of the great object 
of Christ's mission to the world." 

The Old School party in the Church of 1831 had 
large sympathy with some of the views set forth in 
Dr. Rice's overture; but the New School party, 
wedded to the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions, defeated the effort of the former 
party to secure the erection of a Church committee or 
board, through which the Church itself might push 
foreign missions, till 1837, when the Old School peo- 
ple being in the ascendant, organized a board, appoint- 
ed by and directly amenable to the General Assembly 
through which the General Assembly should superin- 
tend and conduct, by its own proper authority, the 
work of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. 
This Church splitting in 1838, New School people con- 
tinued to work with the American Board till 1870, when 
they withdrew to support the Board of Foreign Mis- 
sions of the re-united Presbyterian Church, North. 

In 1857, the Dutch Reformed Church went to doing 
mission work as a Church. In 1858, the Associate 
Reformed Presbyterians became a part of the United 
Presbyterian Church, and withdrew their support from 
the American Board, the united body beginning mis- 
sion work as such. In 1861, the Old School Church, 
South, came into existence. The constituting assem- 
bly which met in Augusta, Georgia, December 4, 1861, 
found on its hands interesting missions, with fifteen 
stations, twelve ordained missionaries and sixteen hun- 



The Church a Missionary Society 177 

dred communicants. Notwithstanding the war waging 
at the time, this Church received this burden with 
joy; and inasmuch as certain of its sons were laboring 
in still other mission territories, it acknowledged its 
obligation to support them, the way being open. The 
Assembly took occasion "to direct the longing eyes of 
the whole Church to those broad fields where Satan 
reigns almost supreme, to India, Siam, China, Japan, 
and especially Africa and South America, which have 
peculiar claims upon us, where we are soon to be called 
to win glorious victories for our King if we prove faith- 
ful." It solemnly charged the Church, that, while in 
the convulsions that were shaking the earth the com- 
ing of His footsteps to take the kingdom bought with 
his blood was heard," they should be preparing to meet 
Him with their whole heart and their largest offer- 
ings." It said, further, 

"Finally, the General Assembly desires distinctly 
and deliberately to inscribe on our Church's banner, 
as she now first unfolds it to the world, in immediate 
connection with the headship of our Lord, His last 
command: 'Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature'; regarding this as the great 
end of her organization, and obedience to it as the 
indispensable condition of her Lord's promised pres- 
ence, and as one great comprehensive object, a proper 
conception of whose vast magnitude and grandeur is 
the only thing, which, in connection with the love of 
Christ, can ever sufficiently arouse her energies and 
develop her resources so as to cause her to carry on, 
with the vigor and efficiency which true fealty to her 
Lord demands, those other agencies necessary to her 
internal growth and home prosperity. The claims 



178 Introduction to Christian Missions 

of this cause ought therefore to be kept constantly 
before the minds of the people and pressed upon their 
consciences. The ministers and ruling elders and 
deacons and Sabbath-school teachers, and especially 
the parents, ought and are enjoined by the Assembly, 
to give particular attention to all those for whose reli- 
gious teaching they are responsible, in training them to 
feel a deep interest in this work, to form habits of 
systematic benevolence, and to feel and respond to the 
claims of Jesus upon them for personal service in the 
field." 

These words show that the leaders of the Southern 
Presbyterian Church in 1861 had a true mental grasp 
of the obligation of the Church to missions. But men 
in a Church may have such a mental grasp and yet 
not act on it practically; and leaders may have such 
a grasp and the people be lagging far behind in theoret- 
ical grasp and in the effort at practical realization. It 
is a matter for thanksgiving that the Assembly of 1861 
expressed so clearly its sense of the Church's duty 
and privilege to be missionary. 

In 1865, the German Reformed Church entered 
upon mission work. 

It heretofore has been narrated that the Church of 
Scotland led the way in reaching the consciousness 
of the missionary character of the Church as such. In 
1843 came the Disruption over the abuses of lay patron- 
age. The Free Church was formed and all the mis- 
sionaries of the State Church, whether at work among 
the Jews, or in India, or in KafTraria, went over to the 
Free Church, sharing the strong spirit of self-sacrifice 
which was associated with the formation of the Free 
Church. The Established Church found, in 1845, other 



The Church a Missionary Society 179 

missionaries to take the place of those in India who 
had gone over to the Free Church; and the Free 
Church made its missions a great concern of the 
Church from the start. This Church has a missionary- 
history of unusual interest and value. Dr. Duff, prior 
to the disruption and while still a missionary of the 
Established Church, had advocated an association of 
all the communicants in every congregation for prayer 
and giving on behalf of Foreign Missions. In the 
course of the fifty years immediately following the 
disruption, seventy-five per cent, of the congregations 
of the Free Church came to have such quarterly as- 
sociations ; and these associations had become "the 
sheet anchor of the Church's missions, not only finan- 
cially but spiritually." Through them the whole 
Church has been becoming missionary, and missions 
the business not of the few but of the many. Having 
a little over half the membership of the Established, 
and without state support, its funds for mission work 
were greater in 1900, than the mission fund of the State 
Church by one-third of the latter. 

In 1847, the United Presbyterian Church in Scot- 
land was constituted by the union of the Secession Church 
and the Relief Church. They had, before their union, 
through separate societies, been doing mission work 
in the West Indies, in West Africa, and in Kaffraria. 
After their union the mission work was brought into 
organized connection with the Church. The Church 
had come to recognize itself as a missionary society. 

October 31, 1900, the Free Church and the United 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland united to form the 
United Free Church of Scotland. This Church carries 
on missions as a concern of the Church ; and is a most 
important missionary agency. 



i8o Introduction to Christian Missions 

The Presbyterian Church is "by its institution, con- 
stitution, object and early history ... a directly 
aggressive missionary power." 'Tresbyterianism sup- 
plies now, as in the time of the Acts of the apostles, 
just the agency and machinery wanted for Foreign 
as well as Home Missions. The gradation of courts, 
in which the laity are equally represented, from the 
Kirk-Session to the General Assembly, which appoints 
the foreign and other mission committees annually, 
and annually reviews their proceedings, enables the 
whole Church to act directly on the mission field, while 
it summons every member personally to pray and give, 
and attracts missionaries from the front ranks of divini- 
ty students and ministers. In the foreign field itself 
as converts become formed into congregations, Pres- 
byterianism — if honestly worked — enables them to 
call their own pastor, support their own machinery, 
and extend it around them as self-governing and self- 
developing communities. As the missionary enter- 
prise of Christendom grows, it must tend to work less 
through societies and more through Churches." 

Congregationalists and Baptists, having no fit oi- 
ganization for the conduct of mission work, have been 
driven to continue the use of societies which have no 
organic connection with the Church. Nevertheless the 
missionary spirit has continued to grow in these 
Churches, the American and British, and in the great 
Methodist connections. Even the people of the Euro- 
pean continental Protestant Churches have been 
awakening in remarkable degrees to their personal 
missionary obligations. 

The zeal for missions has been made more wide- 
spread by certain inter-denominational movements, 



The Church a Missionary Society i8i 

such as the China Inland Mission, founded by that 
genius of deep consecration, Dr. J. Hudson Taylor. 
This mission was founded, 1865, to preach the Gospel 
exclusively in China. It sought missionaries from all 
denominations, if only they had the old Scriptural 
faith. It made little of educational but much of 
spiritual preparation, and welcomed women as preach- 
ers as well ashmen. It sought missionaries who would 
look for no fixed salary, but be content with whatever 
God should supply. Under the influence of expecta- 
tion of the early return of Christ, it made the es- 
sence of mission work not Christianizing but evangel- 
izing-, and it sought to throw the largest possible 
missionary force into the field at once. This society 
has not only thrown a large number of missionary 
workers into the field, but provoked into being other 
societies of similar character, and through the "Cam- 
bridge Seven", and the Student Volunteer Movement 
for Foreign Mission, has been stirring Protestant 
Christendom down to the present. In 1884, the *'Cam- 
bridge Seven" started a missionary fire amongst the 
youth of Great Britain. It spread to North America. 
"At a conference of students which Moody summoned 
to Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, in the middle of 
1886, and which was held for some weeks and was 
devoted to the practical study of the Bible, there was 
formed, chiefly on the incentive of young Mr. Wilder, 
a band of students, or those of both sexes, preparing 
to be students, who made a written declaration, that 
they were willing to become missionaries if God per- 
mitted, and who chose as their watchword, "The 
evangelization of the world in this generation." The 
first hundred who so united themselves at Mount 



1 82 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Hermon, then organized an agitation in the colleges 
and seminaries, which, certainly not without Methodis- 
tical forcing and the rhetoric of enthusiasm, set a move- 
ment at work that in a comparatively short time made, 
it was said, over five thousand young people willing to 
join the band, which was now constituted as the "Stu- 
dent Volunteer Missionary Union."* 

Sobriety has been injected into the movement as 
the years have passed. While the "rhetorical watch- 
word" has been retained, they are careful, many of 
them, to say that they advocate an effort to evangelize 
thoroughly; and that this cry is an appeal to the present 
generation to do their utmost toward the evangeliza- 
tion of the world. Able advocates of this movement 
have endeavored to set it agoing in all parts of Protes- 
tant Christendom. 

These movements and the Moody and Keswick 
evangelistic movements have prepared the way for the 
forward movement in our own Church, in which the 
effort is made to get individuals, or local Churches, to 
support year after year one or more missionaries each. 

They have prepared the way in part, also, for the 
Laymen's Missionary Movement. The Head of the 
Church, unquestionably has used the Students' Volun- 
teer and subsequent movements to stir the evangelical 
Churches and societies to greater exertion. The 
Church has not yet been sufficiently aroused ; she can- 
not be regarded as sufficiently aroused until all the 
rank and file — every member — shall be doing his ut- 
most to push the cause of Christ; but she has shown 
increasing signs of life. 

* Robson's, Warneck: History of Pro^testant Missions, p. ii8. 



The Church a Missionary Society 183 

The missionary portion of Protestantism has held 
for the most part the simple evangelical theory of 
Christianity. It has already been remarked that cer- 
tain eschatological views of early Lutherans and 
that certain views as to the proper relations of Church 
and state, obtaining amongst Lutherans and Reformed 
alike, had made missionary effort unnatural to them. It 
has also been remarked that just where connection 
between Church and state was loosest, i. e., amongst 
dissenters and half-dissenters the zeal for missions first 
appeared. Not that dissent was enough to produce the 
missionary spirit. Evangelical dissent has been pushing 
missions as no other Protestant power since the death 
of Carey. It has carried representatives of state 
Churches in its train. Rationalistic and semi-infidel 
Christianity has made little attempt to propagate it- 
self on the foreign field. It has no sufficient motive. 
The evangelicals have furnished the men and the 
money for mission work. 

The aim of the workers has been almost universally 
to win true disciples ; and as the years have passed 
the purpose of establishing in strategic places suffi- 
ciently equipped, self-maintaining and self-propagat- 
ing Churches, which shall themselves go on winning 
such converts, has become more clear and definite. It 
is desired to give to Japan, for example, a Christian 
plant like our Christian plant here at home though at 
once Japanese and thoroughly Christian, that can and 
will take Japan for Christ; and that will do it rapidly 
and solidly. 

Throughout a large portion of the period, mission 
work has been carried on with a certain simplicity 
"without entering much on questions belonging to the 



184 Introduction to Christian Missions 

theory of missions" ; but as intelligence concerning the 
countries, peoples and tribes to be evangelized has in- 
creased, and as a better comprehension of the principles 
of apostolic missions has been acquired, the theory of 
proper missionary endeavor has received more atten- 
tion ; and an increasing effort has been made to resur- 
rect and apply the principles applied under the imme- 
diate leading of the Holy Ghost in the apostolic age. 
There is a more generally conscious effort to work to- 
day so as to secure for to-morrow the largest addi- 
tional army of efficient witness-bearers. There is a 
less general disposition to seek for mere numbers with- 
out regard to efficiency. There is a more general 
recognition of the possibility of the relative wasting 
of forces, men and treasure, by going after this people 
instead of that; or going at them in great force now 
instead of on some favorable juncture. There is a 
more common conception of the urgency of the ob- 
ligations to capture for Christ great peoples in sea- 
sons of special openness. There is, in short, fuller 
recognition of the divine strategy and tactics of the 
apostolic age, and a greater effort to command men- 
tally the conditions of all the peoples to be evange- 
lized ; and to attempt their evangelization in a tactical 
and strategic way. It may be admitted, however, that 
an adequate theory of missions setting the principles 
in full and scientific form has not yet been furnished. 
The instrument used by the Protestant Churches and 
missionary societies in missions has been almost exclu- 
sively the word, taught and lived. It is probable that 
here and there a missionary has descended to the use 
of a veiled bribe; that as Rice Christians were to be 
had by those who wished to purchase them, so oc- 



The Church a Missionary Society 185 

casionally a missionary stooped to the purchase. This 
sort of work has, however, been far from frequent. 

As to the Methods: The evangeHstic has been the 
most generally in application. The evangelist has 
gather his own crowd of listeners in every legiti- 
mate way, and wherever they could be gotten to 
listen, and told them the story of redemption, 
told it in the simplest and most living manner 
he could command. For example, James Gil- 
mour working amongst the Mongolian nomads, is 
found, first of all, after reaching an encampment, dis- 
sipating the native reserve by tea-drinking, then pro- 
ducing and exhibiting a case of Scripture pictures, and 
stating the main doctrines of Christianity in connec- 
tion with them ; and ''thus enabling even the stupid 
to apprehend his teaching and to remember it." 
Scarcely another evengelist has found a people so ready 
for evangelistic work as Titus Coan found those of 
Hilo in 1835. After the beginning of the great revival, 
1837, "nearly the whole population of Hilo and Puna 
attended religious services ; the sick and the lame were 
brought in litters and on the backs of men ; and at any 
hour of the day or night a tap of the bell would gather 
thousands at the places for prayer and preaching." 
The years 1838 and 1839 were great harvest years with 
him. Seven or eight thousand professed conversion. 
They were slowly admitted to the Church. Great care 
was taken in examining, watching and teaching the can- 
didates. But July I, 1838, 1,705 were received into 
membership ; and 2,400 communicants sat down 
together at the table of the Lord. During the five 
years, ending June, 1841, 7,557 persons were received 
into the Church at Hilo. 



i86 Introduction to Christian Missions 

The success of the evangeHst Coan is explained in 
part by the work of preparation done in Hilo before 
his arrival. Missionary work had been done there al- 
ready. A small Church of thirty-six members had 
been gathered, about one-fourth of the population 
taught to read, and not a little Christian truth put into 
circulation. It is explained in part by the fact of Mr. 
Coan's peculiar fitness for the work; in part, by the 
fact that the people had been savages, without a cultus 
that could hold their respect and without a civilization 
comparable in any respect to that which the mission- 
aries brought them. It is easier to lead savages to 
Christianity than the civilized, or semi-civilized non- 
Christian peoples. In these remarks we are not for- 
getting the efficient and sovereign working of the 
Holy Ghost, without whose agency savage nor civilized 
can be won to a real Christianity. 

Many faithful and able evangelists labor for years 
with small results, feeling at times that they apparently 
would have done as much through months, if they 
had been preaching to, or conversing with, the waves 
of the sea. Still evangelistic preaching is relied on 
mainly to spread the Gospel ; and not less than four 
or five thousand ordained preachers, and a larger num- 
ber of unordained evengelists and catechists are 
preaching the Gospel to-day to heathen peoples. They 
are talking this Gospel, too, in private, as Christ did 
to the woman by the well, and to Nicodemus by night. 
Women are talking it in Zenanas and to their heathen 
sisters whom Christian men cannot reach. They are 
meeting objections. They are instilling the truth, drop 
by drop. 

The literary method came into large application as 



The Church a Missionary Society 187 

has appeared in the time of William Carey, and it has 
been more and more used with the progress of the 
cause. It too, had an apostolic warrant, a large part 
of the New Testament being missionary literature. It 
has ever proven one of the most effective ways in 
which the missionary can present his message to the 
heathen. This method has had its largest and noblest 
application as yet in giving to heathen peoples the 
sacred Scriptures in their own tongues. Between five 
hundred and fifty and six hundred missionaries have 
made translations of the Scriptures. By far the larger 
proportion of existing versions are the product of the 
toil of missionaries on the field, and are used in foreign 
missionary operations ; the number of living and effec- 
tive versions is in excess of four hundred. 

Of only less importance is the interpretative and 
applicatory Christian literature — subsidiary to the 
Bible. Christian peoples in the home land would get 
on badly without such literature. It is not less needed 
on heathen soil for the support, comfort, and edifica- 
tion of the Christianized heathen. There are not less 
than one hundred and twenty-two printing houses on 
heathen soil devoted to publications of this sort. Only 
thirty of them are of considerable size, however, and 
as missionaries are working in about three hundred 
languages, and as these mission presses are not pro- 
portionately distributed, far less is being done along 
this line than should be done. Publication work of 
the sort is so essential to rapid spread of the Gospel 
and the permanent establishment and upbuilding of 
the Church that more strength should be laid out 
along this line. Particularly there seems to be a need 
for the improvement of the periodical output in the 



1 88 Introduction to Christian Missions 

native languages ; and plans should be made for the 
development of a permanent Christian literature in all 
heathen lands. 

The educational method during the early stages of 
Protestant missionary enterprise had been regarded by 
very many as inconsistent with the true missionary 
aim. It was legitimated in the thought of the Churches 
first, as necessary in order to furnish Christian leaders 
for the growing bodies of converts to Christianity. By 
degrees it has come to hold an ever-growing import- 
ance in the minds of missionaries. It prepares the 
way for the Gospel by showing the falsity of the teach- 
ings of the heathen religions, the baselessness of their 
superstitions, the imm.orality of many of their time- 
honored customs, and their crude and childish expla- 
nation of physical phenomena. It prevents the vitiat- 
ing and hardening influence of the heathen education 
which would otherwise take place. It is as necessary 
to the high type of Christian character in the heathen 
land as it is in the home land. It is necessary to 
enable Christian converts to go to the front in business 
and professional careers and thus give the Gospel a 
more favorable hearing than it could otherwise have. 
It is, in many mission territories, necessary in order 
that people be enabled to read the word of God, and 
thus get that knowledge of the truth which God has 
been pleased to make the condition of regeneration. 

It has come to be a very pronounced method of 
missionary endeavor. There are at present more than 
20,000 educational institutions of all kinds, with more 
than 1,000,000 pupils of whom about one-third are 
females. The preparatory schools have sprung into 
being in great numbers during the last twenty-five 
years. 



The Church a Missionary Society 189 

The manner in which educational work is con- 
ducted in the mission fields is so similar in all re- 
spects to the way in which it is conducted at home 
that no description is needed. Hardly any new fad at 
home fails of its analogue on the foreign field. 

Educated ministers, taking the place of mission- 
aries and allowing the latter to devote themselves to 
superintendance and to further evangelization in new 
centres; a better furnished body of laymen to counteir 
balance the undue influence of the ministry ; the eleva- 
tion of the standard of Christian living by a knowledge 
of Christian customs in the home-land; the elevation 
of womanhood; and the proof to the heathen that 
Christianity cares for the whole man, are some of the 
fruits of the educational method. 

The medical method has had a remarkable develop- 
ment in recent mission history. Though there were 
forty medical missionaries on the field as 1849, i^ ^^'^^ 
not till 1879 t^^t the value of this agency for reaching 
heathen peoples became fully recognized. Throughout 
the heathen world, Japan excepted, the practice of 
medicine is marked by dense superstition and carried 
on with unspeakable cruelty. Christian medical mis- 
sions open the way for the entrance of the evangelists, 
pastor and teacher. They propitiate the favor, often 
of the great, for the message which the missionary 
carries ; they open doors into the hearts of their pa- 
tients for the Gospel, being fruit of Gospel grace. The}/ 
secure protection and provision. They destroy social 
barriers to the spread of Gospel doctrine, e. g. caste. 

In principle at least, the medical is vindicated by 
the example of Christ, who was wont to heal the 
body and follow up with instruction touching that life 
which reallv is life. 



190 Introduction to Christian Missions 

The industrial method has been limited thus far to 
a narrow range of missionary effort. "But in some 
portions of Africa, among simple and ignorant people, 
they have been found eminently helpful in giving direc- 
tion to life, and opening up a sphere of usefulness at 
the same time that they afford an opportunity for re- 
ligious instruction. They seem to rescue young lives 
from inanity and idleness, and give them a start in 
a career of self-respecting usefulness, with the Gospel 
planted in their hearts." 

The workers in this period have grown steadily in 
numbers from William Carey's day to the present ; but 
more rapidly since the organization of the China In- 
land Mission, the rise of the Keswick and Moody 
movements, the Student Volunteer Movement, etc. 
There were in 1900 not fewer than 6,850 missionaries, 
470 qualified medical missionaries, 3,250 unmarried 
female missionaries, and 230 certificated women mis- 
sionaries, making a total staff of 10,800. The number 
has increased greatly since that date, certainly by 
more than the one-half of itself. While some socie- 
ties and Churches continue to send almost any ap- 
parently pious person who will agree to go, many of 
the societies and Churches prosecuting missions look 
more and more for men qualified by native endowments 
and training for leadership; and the missionary ranks 
are marked not only by a high general level of Chris- 
tian consecration, but by not a few men of command- 
ing abilities and culture, and efficiency in a variety of 
conditions. Alexander Duff was a man of marked 
talent whom his Church would have had return to 
Scotland in 1846, on the death of Dr. Chalmers, to hold 
the office of principal and professor of theology in the 



The Church a Missionary Society 191 

Free College. But he had a more important post in 
India in his collegiate institute with its 800 or more 
students, and he knew it. His "dauntless will, con- 
summate eloquence, impassioned piety, great self- 
reliance," place him close to Thomas Chalmers in the 
ranks of great Scotchmen. Great as Dufif is he stands 
in company with peers, in Adoniram Judson, John 
Kenneth MacKenzie, Alexander Murdoch Mackay, 
David Livingstone, George Leslie Mackay, James Gil- 
mour, Titus Coan, Ian Keith-Falconer, Robert Morri- 
son, etc. 

These missionaries have been instrumental in set- 
ting to active work a great force of native Christian 
workers. There were in 1903 about 70,000 native 
workers, 24,500 places of regular worship, 23,527 ele- 
mentary schools, 900 higher educational institutions of 
learning, 553 hospitals, 147 publishing houses and 
printing establishments. These helpers, schools and 
so forth have been multiplied several fold in the last 
thirty years. 

The missionary workers have been very unequally 
distributed over the mission territory. Of late, for ex- 
ample, about two-ninths only of the entire missionary 
force have been at work among the 700,000,000 non- 
Christian peoples of India, China and Japan; while 
nearly four-ninths of this entire force have been at 
work among 180,000,000 heathen of the lower and 
the lowest grades of heathenism. This has been due 
in part to the greater accessibility of these lower grades 
of peoples than the higher to the missionary. Thus 
God has been pleased to show favor to the poor Sama- 
ritans of the modern world. This distribution has 
been due in part, perhaps, to want of consideration 



192 Introduction to Christian Missions 

on the part of the Church as to how the work might 
be done most strategically. It is believed that mis- 
sionary workers are now, as never before, looking for 
the right end at which to take hold of the great job 
before them — the taking of the world for Christ. 

The numbers won on heathen soil since the going 
out of Duff to India are not large ; but have been in- 
creasing with the decades. It is said that the total 
number of Christian adherents won from heathenism, 
and then living, did not exceed 70,000 in 1800. It is 
said that by 1881, the number of such adherents had 
grown to 2,283,000 ; and that by 1903, the number had 
come to be 4,462,500. 

During this period Protestantism, through its 
spawning power and home missions, has grown im- 
mensely ; and the results of its missions to the heathen 
cannot be measured by the number of the converts, 
unless these be regarded as seed in a soil that has been 
helpfully and increasingly stirred by a great variety 
of methods, evangelistic, literary, medical, etc., and 
which may be expected, after a little to bring forth, 
some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold. 
The character of the converts won while not up to the 
level of Christian character in Europe and America, 
speaks of the uplifting power of the Gospel. For ex- 
ample, "In South India there is one convicted of crime 
out of 25,000 Christians, one out of 447 Hindus, and 
one out of 728 Mohammedans." 

The world has opened up to missions in this age 
as never before. India was opened up more and more 
after 1813. From 1858, the missionaries throughout all 
British India were certain of British civil protection. 
China has been opening by degrees since 1842; Japan 



The Church a Missionary Society 193 

since 1853, and more rapidly after 1858; and Korea 
since 1882. Since 1870, a large part of the world has 
fallen open as never before. The Mohammedan world 
however, particularly that part of it under Moham- 
medan civil government, cannot be said to be really 
open for work on Mohammedans. Nor is Tibet open. 

This vast open territory the Church is trying to 
overrun ; to build up fortresses here and there all over 
it, fortresses which shall, everywhere, become great 
recruiting camps for the armies of the Lord of Hosts ; 
and from which shall go out bands that shall at length 
take all the land. When the forces at work on the 
field, and the converts won, are compared with the 
one billion heathen the promise of an early conquest 
may look small. But Christianity is now the religion 
of, by far, the largest number of adherents of all the 
religions. The Christians control the politics and the 
resources of the world as the peoples of all other re- 
ligions combined do not. The Lord of Hosts is on 
the side of missions. Let Him stir Christian peoples 
in behalf of missions, and pour out His Spirit upon 
all flesh — upon heathen peoples; and nations shall be 
born in a day. 

This is an age of measureless opportunities, in the 
open doors, of measureless advantages in the Christian 
plants installed, in the impression already made on 
heathenism, and in the indications of the divine readi- 
ness to bless mission work. 



LECTURE X. 
Motives to Missionary Endeavor. 

In the course of these lectures we have endeavored 
to set forth the place of missions in the divine design 
of the Church and its life, the principles which the 
Church's Great Head would have her apply in her 
missionary efforts, the application of these principles 
in his missionary work by the apostle Paul. We have 
tried also to describe, in its more important aspects, 
the Church's missionary work, in all the several 
periods of Church history from the apostolic age to the 
present; and to show the real character of this work, 
in the several periods by comparing, or contrasting, 
it with apostolic teaching and example. In the course 
of these lectures many reasons have been brought to 
view incidentally wherefore the Church of our day 
should give itself to missionary endeavor. But mis- 
sions are of such practical importance that it has been 
deemed expedient to gather together for your consid- 
eration some of the more urgent reasons for missionary 
effort on the part of the Church. 

My brethren, do you understand the importance of 
missionary effort on the part of the Church? Do you 
feel its importance? Are you fully awake on this sub- 
ject? Have you determined that wherever you work 
and whatever you do you will push the mission cause? 
Whether you are pastors, or evangelists, or professors, 
or editors, you ought to be missionary in heart, aim- 
ing so to spend your lives as to spread the Gospel most 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 195 

rapidly and fully throughout the whole earth. Many 
of you should labor in the foreign field, perhaps. "My 
brethren, I am ashamed that there are so many of us 
here in this Christian land. We must go to the 
heathen,"* said Dr. William Armstrong to the minis- 
ters and Church of Richmond, Va., in 1833. 

Might not his words be repeated with fitness in 
many of the towns and cities in this land? There are 
too many ministers at home in proportion to those in 
foreign missions fields ; and too many in the older por- 
tions of the Church in proportion to the number in the 
destitute districts of the home land. W^hen Gossner 
said, in Berlin, in 1844, to young men starting for 
India, "Up, up, my brethren, the Lord is coming, and 
to every one He will say, 'Where hast thou left the 
souls of the heathen? With the devil?' Oh swiftly 
seek those souls and enter not without them into the 
presence of the Lord," he was guilty of no empty 
hyperbole. By a man of sufficient earnestness, a like 
exhortation might well be addressed to the young men 
of to-day in behalf of the destitute in Foreign and in 
Home Mission fields. 

Let us', then, with a prayer for the Spirit's bless- 
ing upon our work, review some of the motives which 
should lead the Church of God of our day to give 
itself to spreading the truth from pole to pole and 
around the whole belt of the globe — some of the mo- 
tives w^hich should make you willing to go anywhere 
and do any right thing in order to further most effi- 
ciently the discipling of all nations. 

Amongst the many forces which should lead the 

* A. C Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 7. 



196 Introduction to Christian Missions 

Church — which should lead you to missionary en- 
deavor, are: 

1st. Love to God. Love to God should lead you to 
missionary endeavor. 

God desires that the Church should be missionary. 
He has shown this unmistakably by the constitution 
which he gave the Church in Abraham's day and on 
which he has kept it down to this day. He has shown 
it also by His providential dealing with it in history. 
He has shown it by all His revealed teachings concern- 
ing the design of the Church and the nature of the 
Gospel ; and He has shown it by laying the express 
injunction on the Church, ''Go ye, therefore, and dis- 
ciple all nations." * 

He who studies the constitution of the Church as 
set forth in Scripture, the design of the Church and 
of the Gospel, the leading of the Church by the Holy 
Spirit, and the last charge to his immediate disciples 
of the Lord Christ, can have no doubt that the Church 
and its members can only meet the divine approba- 
tion by steadily and earnestly applying themselves to 
missionary endeavor. The God of revelation wishes the 
Church to give the Gospel to all nations ; and not mere- 
ly to all nations, in their mass severally, but to all of 
all nations ; not merely to Korea, and China, and Japan, 
and India, and Africa, but to all the Koreans, all the 
Chinese, all the Japanese, all the Hindoos and all the 
Africans. He wishes his followers of to-day to preach 
the Gospel to all who have it not; to Hottentots, to 
Hindoo Coolies, High Caste Brahmins, Thibetians, 

* Matt, xxviii. 19, "Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature." Mark xvi. 15, 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 197 

the upper four hundred of New York, the lowest four 
hundred thousand in the same city— all every where 
who have not the Gospel. He wishes His Church not 
simply to preach the Gospel in the hearing of every 
creature, but to endeavor to make disciples of them 
by putting them into personal individual relations to 
Christ like those of the pupils to their revered Jewish 
Rabbi. 

There can be no question as to what the Church 
and what you must do if God is to be pleased; nor 
can there be any question as to God's worthiness to 
be pleased. Of measureless power and wisdom and 
holiness and justice and goodness and truth; so loving 
''the world as to send His only begotten Son that who- 
soever believeth on Him should not perish but have 
everlasting life," "commending His love unto us in 
that while yet sinners Christ died for us," surely we 
ought to desire to please Him. Nor should it be for- 
gotten that the command to disciple all nations was 
given by that person in the blessed Trinity who at 
once occupied the most intimate relations with man 
and has purchased those relationships, at infinite cost 
to himself. The command to disciple all nations was 
uttered by the incarnate Son, as Mediatorial King. He 
had the right to lay this command upon his disciples 
not only because of his divine perfection, but because 
he had purchased the Mediatorial Kingship by His 
vicarious toils and sufferings for man. He had served 
God and man to death, and through death, and God had 
"raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own 
right hand in the heavenly places, far above all prin- 
cipalities and power, and might, and dominion, and 
every name that is named not only in this world, but 



198 Introduction to Christian Missions 

also in that which is to come ; and put all things under 
his feet, and gave Him to he the head over all things to 
the Churchy which is His body the fulness of Him that 
aileth all in all." Christ the Mediatorial King our Re- 
deemer, God, of infinite essential moral worth, and who 
hath also purchased, at the cost of His incarnation, 
humiliation and death, the headship over His own, bids 
them — you — go and disciple all nations. 

"Ko-Chat-Thing, a Karen convert, when in this 
country, was asked on one occasion to address a con- 
gregation respecting their obligation to send out mis- 
sionaries. After a moment of thought he asked with 
a good deal of emotion : 'Has not Christ told them to 
do it?' 'Oh, yes,' was the reply, 'but we wish you to 
remind them of their duty.' 'Oh, no,' said the Karen, 
'if they will not mind Jesus Christ, they will not mind 
me.' No indeed ; if they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, if they hear not Him who has risen from 
the dead, whom will they hear?"* 

See what God's desire for His Church is, in the 
matter of missions, and that His desert of love on our 
part toward Him is infinite, and that in the person of 
the Son, He has laid by express command, the duty of 
world wide missions on his followers and His Church, 
love to God, if it be in us, must move us to give our- 
selves to missionary endeavor, it will say, with Paul, 
"For we have thus judged that in that Christ died he 
died that henceforth we who live, should not live unto 
ourselves but unto Him who for our sakes died and 
rose again." 

2nd. Love to your fellow-man should move you to 
missionary endeavor. 

* A. C Thompson, Foreign Missions, pp. 62 flf. 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 199 

We take for granted that you are possessed of this 
high quality. It is of the very Spirit of Christ; and 
you are believed to be Christians. If you are wholly 
destitute of Christian love for your fellowman, you 
are no more akin to Christ than a hav^k is to a dove. 
And does not this love say, "Thou shalt be thy 
brother's keeper?" Does it not sympathize with Paul 
when he says, "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for 
you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions 
of Christ, in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the 
Church." * 

My brethren, love to our fellowmen should lead us 
to missionary endeavor. That is the way the heathen 
peoples think of it. The duty resting on us to give the 
Gospel to the heathen is not a "recondite matter of ob- 
ligation." Listen with John Eliot to the Indians at 
Natick as they inquire why the English have delayed 
so long to instruct them in the knowledge of God. 
Hear them say, "Had you done it sooner, we might 
have known much of God by this time, and much sin 
might have been prevented, but now some of us have 
grown old in sin." * 

Hear an aged warrior, on the Manitoulin Islands in 
the year 1840, say to a missionary, "I am the chief of 
a numerous people and I wish them to be instructed. 
We have heard that our brothers who are near the 
white settlements have received the Great Word. We 
have heard that the Great Spirit has told the white 
man to send the Great Word to all his children. Why 
does he not send it to us? I have been looking many 

* Col. i. 24. 

* A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 66; Francis's Life of 
John Eliot, pp. 88, 89. 



200 Introduction to Christian Missions 

moons down the river to see the missionary's canoe, 
but it has not yet come." f 

Listen again to the African Sechele, Chief of the 
Bakwains, as he says to David Livingstone : "All my 
forefathers have passed away into darkness without 
knowing anything of what was to befall them ; how 
is it that your forefathers, knowing all these things, 
did not send the word to my forefathers sooner." J 

Go now to the Sandwich Islands, look on that aged 
woman moving about in great distress, beating her 
breast and wailing as she looks at thousands of happy 
Christian children gathered at a great Sunday School 
convention in Hilo. Hear her explain her grief: "Why 
did not the missionaries come before? These hands 
are stained with the blood of twelve children, and not 
one of my flesh remains to rejoice here to-day. Oh, 
why did not the missionaries come before?"* 

The unenlightened heathen would seem to be able 
to teach no small portion of Christendom on this point. 
They see that simple love to man should move us to 
give the Gospel to them. 

It may be questioned whether we expound properly 
to ourselves the command to love our neighbors as our- 
selves. Certainly there is a radical defect in most of 
the cuirent Christian ethical teaching on this matter 
of our duty to our heathen neighbor. Does the hearer 
know of a system of ethics taught in many of our col- 

t Robert Adler, Wesleyan Missions, London 1842, p. 29 ; A. C. 
Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 6y. 

$ Livingstone's Cambridge Lectures, Lect. i, p. 5; A. C. 
Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 68. 

* Miss West's Romance of Missions, pp. 609, 610; A. C. 
Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 70. 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 201 

leges, or universities in v^hich any sufficient emphasis 
is laid upon the subject of our duty to our heathen 
neighbor? In the ethical teaching of the great schools 
of Christendom to this day, is there not a spirit Phari- 
saic if not Sudducean? Is not duty to the heathen 
ignored? But according to the Scriptures, our neigh- 
bor is whomsoever we can help. He is every man on 
the globe that we can reach. To the lawyer who 
thinking to justify himself, said, "Who is my neigh- 
bor?" Jesus uttered the parable of the Good Samaritan, 
and thus forced the lawyer to admit that to be neigh- 
borly meant to show mercy to him who needed it, of 
whatever race he might be. If we would love our 
neighbors as ourselves then we must go to those races 
and tribes and persons who have fallen into helpless 
wretchedness and woe, because sorely smitten of sin. 
Christian neighborliness, brotherly love should move 
you to missionary endeavor. 

3rd. Legitimate love to yourself should lead you to 
missionary endeavor. 

The appeal to self-love is sometimes stigmatized, 
owing to a confusion of self-love with selfishness. 
Selfishness moves one to seek his own welfare at the 
cost of the rights of others. Legitimate self-love never 
does, but moves to seek the well being of others along 
with one's own. That there is a legitimate self-love 
is evident from the repeated appeal to it in the Deca- 
logue, from the repeated appeals to it in the teaching 
of our Lord, as well as from the profoundest modern 
philosophic teaching, e. g.. Bishop Butler's. The 
makers of our Shorter Catechism did well in giving it 
a place in their answer to the first question: What is 
the chief end of man? They say, "The chief end of 



202 Introduction to Christian Missions 

man is' to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever^ 
Happiness is linked with duty, the two forming a 
complex end of the life of man. Now our present point 
is that a legitimate self-love should move you to mis- 
sionary endeavor. 

This appears from the following considerations : 
I. Regard for your reputation for a life consistent 
with your profession — a legitimate self-interest — should 
move you to missionary endeavor. 

You are the professor of a religion of right univer- 
sal. It is destined to be universal some day. The 
stone which Daniel saw cut without hands from the 
mountain and grow, become a great mountain and fill 
the whole earth, symbolized the growth of that king- 
dom which Christ set up. In accord with that 
prophecy, the Church believes, as the Psalmist as- 
serts, "that all the ends of the world shall remember 
and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the 
nations shall remember and turn unto Him" ;* believes 
that the day will come when "they shall not teach 
every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, 
saying know the Lord; for all shall know Him from 
the least to the greatest." f The Church begins as a 
grain of mustard seed. It has grown and will grow; 
but meanwhile the Church and you as members of the 
Church are pledged to labor for its growth. You have 
in professing Christianity pledged yourself to make 
Christ and His cause uppermost in your life. You re- 
peat this solemn pledge every time you take the Lord's 
Supper, and profess it, as often as you in any way 

* Psalm xxii. 27. 

t Heb. viii. 11; cf. Rev. xiv. 6. 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 203 

profess to be His disciple. On every such occasion, 
you profess that you are one of those pledged to follow 
Christ in His supreme love for God and Christlike love 
for man ; one of those pledged therefore to obedience to 
His great charge. Every time you repeat the 
Lord's Prayer, you pray, too, for the coming of the 
Kingdom of God. How plain it is then that a regard 
for your reputation for a life consistent with your pro- 
fession should move you to missionary endeavor. 

2. Regard for your reputation as humane should 
move you to missionary endeavor. 

You deprecate and abhor inhumanity. Our age 
boasts itself as a humane age ; our race, as a humane 
race. Among the most generally pleasing stories to 
our age are stories illustrating the humane. What 
more pleasing anecdote of all those related by Boswell 
of Samuel Johnson than that of the great man's carry- 
ing a poor and degraded woman, whom he had found 
lying in a state of exhaustion in the street to his own 
home and there caring for her till her recovery? Per- 
haps, no story of the great Anselmn has wider circu- 
lation than that of his protection of a hare. Who of 
you has not heard the story of General Lee's care, in 
the midst of a battle, of a fledgling bird? It is even 
a fashion to be humane in our times. We have all 
sorts of asylums for a man and beasts. We grow in- 
dignant at instances of grave inhumanity, especially 
to suffering multitudes, as at those Russian specula- 
tors in grain in the year 1890, when in the face of a 
terrible drought, and widespread poverty, they cornered 
the bread stuff; and made the famine vastly more aw- 
ful to the poor people ; and as at similar speculators 
in Russia during very recent years; and during the last 
year in China. 



204 Introduction to Christian Missions 

But is there not danger of our doing a much more 
dreadful thing than these Russian and Chinese specula- 
tors have done. They withheld from their starving 
fellows material bread. They reduced many to death 
by starvation preceded by unspeakable wretchedness 
and suffering of the body and mind and heart as they 
looked on the agonies of starving dear ones. We may 
easily withhold the bread of eternal life and bring on 
them eternal wretchedness and woe unspeakable. 

It is inhuman not to give the Gospel to the heathen 
in the presence of their spiritual famine. The heathen 
are perishing for want of the Gospel. 

Let no one deny that the heathen need the Gospel. 
Granting that there was a possibility of salvation for 
adult heathen men and women without the Gospel, it 
would still be our duty to give the heathen the Gospel. 
Every reason which may be offered in behalf of giving 
the Gospel to the world at home may be offered also 
for giving it to the world abroad. The man who will 
not help his neighbor who has fallen among thieves 
simply because that neighbor will not certainly utterly 
perish deserves to be despised. Much more we, if we 
will not give the Gospel to the heathen, even supposing 
that they have a chance at salvation. On that supposi- 
tion it is ours to give them a better chance. But no 
honest and candid interpretation of the Bible favors the 
notion that adult heathen are saved without a knowl- 
edge of Christ. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. 
No man cometh unto the Father but by me," saith our 
Lord. "The Scripture saith whosoever believeth on 
Him shall not be ashamed. . . . For whosoever 
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How 
then shall they call on Him in whom they have not 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 205 

believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom 
they have not heard? And how shall they hear with- 
out a preacher? And how shall they preach except 
they be sent?" 

These Scriptures present Jesus as the one way of 
salvation and some knowledge of Him as a necessary 
condition of salvation. Moreover, missionaries are 
said to have found no case of a man's having lived 
up to the light which he had in such a manner as to 
ground a hope of his salvation. Hence experimen- 
tally as well as on Biblical grounds the heathen seem 
to stand in imperative need of the Gospel. They are 
perishing from want of it. Hence, from this point of 
view, if you would not be written down as inhuman, 
regard for your reputation as humane should move you 
to missionary endeavor. 

3. Desire to preserve our reputation as persons of 
■fidelity and gratitude should move us to he missionary. 

We have received the Gospel and all Christian 
graces on trust to be imparted to others. God's truth 
is for the whole world. The oil and wine of Jesus' 
teaching is ours not for ourselves alone, but for our 
neighbors wherever under heaven they can be found. 
The bread of life belongs by the bequest of God to 
the world of men to whom we have not yet given it. 
The bread is not exclusively ours. God has entrusted 
it to us that we may give light with it to all the world 
including the heathen in their conscious wretchedness. 
How we hate unfaithfulness to trust in affairs of this 
world — unfaithfulness in guardians of orphaned chil- 
dren, unfaithfulness in the use of funds given for speci- 
fic purposes ! How the world excoriates a Hippel ! But 
if we misemploy that which God commits to us to be 



2o6 Introduction to Christian Missions 

used according to His own direction for the good of 
others, are we not, Aphobuses, Hippels, unfaithful? 
Again, we are ourselves the fruits of missionary effort. 
The civilization of European states and their offspring 
in America and the religion of these peoples would 
have been very different but for the messengers of 
the cross. Paul and the missionaries who followed 
him to Europe have made us forever their debtors. 
We owe a debt of gratitude to them and to that greater 
missionary, who came as such to this benighted world. 
How can we show our gratitude to these early mis- 
sionaries? How except by taking up the work which 
they would undoubtedly be doing were they alive and 
able to work this day. Paul would certainly be a mis- 
sionary, desiring to have fruit amongst this people 
and that, were he here unchanged in character. The 
thing that we must do to show our gratitude to Paul 
is to push the cause which he pushed ; and we can 
express our gratitude to the Lord Jesus Christ better 
this way than any other. He will count work of this 
sort as though a favor done Himself personally. He 
will say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least 
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." If 
v/e have any gratitude it will out, and how otherwise? 
Desire, then, to preserve your reputation as capable 
of fidelity and of gratitude, and to escape being written 
down as ingrates, should move you to missionary en- 
deavor. 

4. Desire to secure the helpful reflex influence from 
it, upon yourselves, and upon the people of your 
Churches should lead you to missionary endeavor. 

In order to such missionary effort as was enjoined 
by Christ upon His Church, you must have informa- 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 207 

tion and the rank and file of the Church must have in- 
formation. The obligations to the work must be kept 
before the mind, the principles on which Christ would 
have it conducted must be kept before the mind, the 
opportunities, and open door, for such effort, must be 
kept before the mind, the world's sore need must be 
kept before the mind. If you get and give the needed 
information, press the motives to, expound the princi- 
ples on which, missions should be conducted, present 
the special openings for, it will give you, and all whom 
you specially influence, an intellectual and moral 
quickening, making them look on all historic move- 
ments with greater zest, and intelligence ; it will give 
a higher tone and vigor to your whole mental life. 
When you have become a pastor, you will have done no 
mean thing when you have lifted a congregation above 
a consideration of its own small local matters and 
made it look upon its commission from the Lord Jesus 
Christ as world-wide, when you have made it se^ that 
God has given to it a glorious task — a work which 
angels might well aspire to do. Think of the peasant 
Church of Hermansburg, Hanover, Germany, under 
the leadership of Louis Harms — establishing a theolo- 
gical school for the education of missionaries, build- 
ing a ship to carry its missionaries to Africa, planting 
eight vigorous colonies in that savage field, pushing 
missions over a wide territory, "reaching from the 
Zulus on the coast to the Bechuanas in the centre, and 
from Orange River to Lake Nyami." * What a men- 
tal and moral growth must have taken place in that 
congregation! Moreover if you will lead your people 

* Hoppin, Pastoral Theology, p. 533. 



2o8 Introduction to Christian Missions 

to active missionary work, you will give them more 
comfort, perhaps, than if you shall preach ever so much 
on the consolation of the Gospel for all those who 
mourn. Hear the testimony of old Andrew Fuller on 
this question. "There was a period of my ministry," 
says Andrew Fuller, "marked by the most pointed, 
systematic effort to comfort my serious people; but 
the more I tried to comfort them, the more they com- 
plained of doubts and darkness. ... I knew not 
what to do nor what to think ; for I had done my best 
to comfort these mourners in Zion. At this time it 
pleased God to direct my attention to the claims of the 
.perishing heathen in India. I felt that we had been 
living for ourselves and not caring for their souls. I 
spoke as I felt. My serious people wondered and wept 
over their past inattention to the subject. They be- 
gan to talk about a Baptist mission. The females 
especially began to collect money for the spread of 
the Gospel. We met and prayed for the heathen ; met 
and considered what could be done amongst ourselves 
for them ; met and did what we could. And whilst all 
this was going on, the lamentation ceased. The sad 
became cheerful and the despairing calm. No one com- 
plained of want of comfort. And I, instead of having 
to study how to comfort my flock, was myself com- 
forted by them. They were drawn out of themselves, 
sir; that was the real secret. God blessed them while 
they tried to be a blessing." * 

Honest genuine missionary work gives a Christ- 
like conception of truth, duty, man, and God, and 
Christlike habits of character. Engage in it you will 
confirm your faith and your people's faith. As you 

* Quoted in A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, pp. 28, 29. 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 209 

throw yourselves into line with one of God's great pur- 
poses, you will come under the influence of a powerful 
persuasive of the truth of Christianity. There shall 
be verified in your experience the truth of that saying 
of our Lord, "If any man will do His will he shall 
know of the doctrine whether it be of God !" \ 

Our limits do not allow the full development of 
the present point. What has been said may suggest 
a volume of what might be said along parallel lines 
in confirmation of the value of the reflex influence of 
missionary effort on the Church. In pushing this 
work properly you will be at the same time lifting your- 
self and the Church in the home-land in the sphere of 
your influence. You will be enlarging mentally, mor- 
ally, and spiritually, your length, and breadth and 
heighth and depth, and that of your Church. You will 
be transforming by the power of the truth and the truth 
applied, yourselves and your churches. 

Let this suflice to confirm the present contention 
that, desire to secure the helpful reflex influence from 
it upon yourselves, and the Christian peoples whom 
you are in any wise responsible for, should lead you 
to missionary endeavor. 

5. Desire to put yourself into the ranks of the 
noblest heroes of the ages should lead you to be 
missionary. 

There are no names on the pages of secular history 
brighter than those of the missionaries, Paul, Schwartz, 
William Carey, Henry Martin, David Livingstone, 
Moffat, MacKay, and others. They were heroes, and 
their heroism has qualities rarely found in that of secu- 
lar history's most splendid and heroic men. 

t John vii. 17. 



210 Introduction to Christian Missions 

The self-denying worker for the mission cause 
though he spend all his days *4n the home-land, may 
develop the same shining qualities. The genuine mis- 
sionary spirit must work in all, who are filled with it, 
somewhat of the same character. Hence the desire to 
put yourselves into the ranks of the noblest body of 
heroes known to history should move you to mis- 
sionary endeavor. 

6. The desire to preserve your sense of right should 
lead you to missionary endeavor. 

Righteousness says, Don't be a hypocrite, profes- 
sing to be walking after your Lord's commands when 
you are not. Righteousness says. Be faithful to the 
trust committed to our hands. Righteousness says. 
Don't be an ingrate but be grateful. Righteousness 
says. Don't fail of self-sacrificing love. Righteousness 
says, Emulate noble example. Righteousness says. 
Don't be inhumane, be humane. 

How can you preserve your sense of right, now, 
without heeding the "don'ts" and the ''do" of righteous- 
ness ; and this sense of right must be preserved in or- 
der to the highest manhood. 

7. Desire to meet your responsibilities should lead 
you to missionary endeavor. 

Our light is the fullest, the command of God to dis- 
ciple all nations rings with unmistakable clearness. We 
have the amplest opportunities. The world, with the 
possible exception of the central plateau of Asia, lies 
open to the missionaries of the cross. Communication 
is easy. Steamships, railways, and telegraph lines have 
reduced the earth to the dimensions of a neighborhood. 
Enormous wealth and power have been put into the hands' 
of the Church, in your hands to some extent, which may 



Motives to Missionary Endeavor 211 

be applied to the work of evangelizing the world. To 
whom the Lord giveth much, of him will he also require 
much. Everything in God's part toward you that calls 
for Udelityy for gatitude, for self-sacrificing love, for the 
emulation of noble examples, of Christian living, every- 
thing, severally, and all together, lay a heavy responsi- 
bility upon you to give yourselves to missionary endeavor. 
God help you to meet the responsibility aright. Amen. 



INDEX. 

Pace. 
Aim of Mission Effort : 

In Apostolic Age 51 

In Ante-Nicene Age 74 

In Post-Nicene Age 82, 83 

In Mediaeval Age 92,93 

In Modern Roman Missions 115, 116 

In Protestant Missions 140, 169, 183 

American Baptist Missionary Society 166 

American Bible Society 166, 167 

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 165, 166 

Anselm 91 

Ansgar 96 

Armstrong, Dr. Wm 195 

Augustine 76, 96 

Augustines 126 

Berengar 91 

Bliss, E. M., quoted 71 

Boniface 96 

Brainherd 150, 165 

British and Foreign Bible Society 166 

British East India Company 151, 152 

Bucer, Martin 131 

Calvin , 127, 133, 136 

Calvinists 136, 148 

"Cambridge Seven," The 181 

Carey, William, 

14, 98, 150, 152, 154, fif., 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 187, 190, 209 

Celsus 78 

Chalmers, Thomas 172, 190, 191 

Charles Martel 96 

Christian, Obscure, Part in Missions 41, 78, 79, 95 



214 Index 

Christians of To-day: 

Under Obligation to Missions 24, 25, 66-68 

How Meeting the Obligation 68, ^9 

Church, The, Ordained of God to be a Missionary Society, 9, ff 

The Members of, Pledged to Mission Endeavor 24, 25 

Of Right, The, Missionary Society 11-29 

Should Know the Truth 46, 47 

Preach the Truth uneviscerated 47, 48 

Learn the Religious Condition of Various Parts of the 

World 48, 49 

Select its Instruments for the Several Parts of its Witness- 
bearing 50, 51 

Work for the Most Effective Additions. 51 

May Suffer for Lagging 51, 52 

Lost the Consciousness of Being Missionary 86 

Began to Become Conscious of Itself as a Missionary 

Society 171, ff. 

Church, The Apostolic, the Four Periods in the Life of. .. .33, ff. 

Church, Dutch Reformed 176, 177 

Church, The Free, of Scotland 178, 179 

Church, The German Reformed, 1865 178 

Church, The, of Scotland, First to Become Conscious of 

Itself as a Missionary Society 171, 172, 178 

Church, The Presbyterian, Its Polity Adopted to Mission 

Work 180 

Church, The Presbyterian Church, South, Committed to 

Missions 25, 26, 176, 177, 178 

Church, The Presbyterian, in U. S. A 172, 173-176 

Church, The United Presbyterian 176 

Church, The United Presbyterian of Scotland 179 

Church Missionary Society 163 

Coan, Titus 185, 186, 191 

Coke, Thomas 164 

Coligny 135 

Columba 76, 86 

Columbanus 96 

Converts Won : 

In Apostolic and in Ante-Nicene Age 79, 80 

In Post-Nicene Age 87, 88 



Index 215 

Converts Won : — Continued, 

In Mediaeval Age 103-104 

In Modern Romish Missions 126, 127 

In Protestant Missions 192, 193 

Covenant, Abrahamic, The Missionary Character of 10, ff. 

Crusades 97 

Cyrillus 97 

Danish-Halle Mission 145, 146 

Dawn of Modern Missions 141, fif . 

Dispersion, The Synogogues of Missionary Centres 16 

Dionysius TJ 

Dispensation, Mosaic, Missionary Character of 11, ff. 

Dominicans 79, 118, 123, 125, 126 

Duff 172, 190, 191 

Edesius 86 

Edinburgh Missionary Society 162, 163 

Edwards, Jonathan 150, 165, 167 

Eliot, John 138-140, 165, 199 

Ephesus 61-64 

Erasmus's Missionary Ideal 106-1 13 

Eusebius 7^, 77 

Fabian yj 

Fox 150 

Franciscans 97, 119, 123, 125, 126 

Francis of Assisi 97 

Francke 145-147 

Frumentius 86 

Fuller, Andrew 208 

Gallus 96 

Gilmour, James 185, 191 

Glasgow Missionary Society 163 

Gossner 195 

Gregory, the Armenian 86 

Gregory of Tours 77 

Gregory the Great 96 

Huss 91 

Hoppin 207 

Inglis 172 



2i6 Index 

Instruments in Mission Work: 

In Apostolic Age 46, 47 

In Ante-Nicene Age 75 

In Nicene and Post-Nicene Age 84 

In Mediaeval Age 94 

In Modern Romish Missions 117-119 

In Protestant Missions 140, 169, 184, 185 

Interdenominational Movements 181, 182 

Irenaeus 'j'j 

Jesuits 1 19-121, 122, 123-125, 126 

John de Monte Corvino 97 

Jonah, The Mission of .- 12, 13 

Judson, Adoniram 165, 166, 191 

Justin Martyr 78, 80 

Keith- Falconer, Ion 191 

Keswick 182, 190 

Knox, John 134 

Ko-Chat-Thing 198 

Las. Casas, Bartholomew 125 

Law, The Mosaic, Missionary 11, ft. 

Laymen's Missionary Movement 182 

Leibnitz 144 

Livingstone, David 162, 191, 200, 209 

London Missionary Society 160-162 

Lull, Raymund 98 ff. 

Luther •. 127, 130, 131, 132 

Lutherans 132, 133, 134, 142-148, 163 

Mackay, Alexander Murdoch 191, 209 

Mackay, George Leslie 191, 209 

McKenzie, John Kenneth 191 

Marshman 156, 157, 158 

Martin, Henry 150, 209 

Melancthon 131, 132 

Methodius 97 

Methods in Mission Work : 

In Apostolic Age 5i> 52 

In Ante-Nicene Age 75-76 

In Nicene and Post-Nicene Age 84-86 

In Mediaeval Age 94> 95 



Index 217 

Methods in Mission Work :— Continued. 

In Modern Romish Missions 1 19-123 

In Protestant Missions 140, 169, 185-190 

Miesrob 86 

Mills, Samuel J 165 

Missions : Apostolic, 30, ff., 71, 72 

Patristic 70, ff. 

Nicene and Post-Nicene 81, ff. 

Nestorian 88, 89 

Mediaeval, 91, ff. 

Modern Roman Missions 113, ff. 

Attitude of Protestant and Reformed, 1517-1781, to- 
ward 128, ff. 

Dutch State Missions 136, 148 

Danish-Halle, 145, ff. 

Moravian Missions 146, ff. 

By the Great Voluntary Missionary Societies 154, ff. 

The Church Conscious of Obligation to Missions 171-193 

Missions, Grounds of Obligation to 9, ff., 55, ff., 66, ff. 

Moffat, Robert 161, 162, 209 

Mohammed 88 

Moody 181, 182 

Moravian Missions 146, 159, 191 

Morrison, Robert 161 

Motives to Missionary Endeavor 194, ff. 

Nestorian Misssions 88, 89 

New Testament, Missionary Character of 18 

Nobili, Robert de 118 

Opening of the World to Missions 136-138, 151-153, 192-193 

Origen 78 

Pantaenus 76, 77 

Patrick 76, 86 

Paul, Prepared for Missions 44 

Called to Antioch 45 

His Sense of His Obligation to Missions 53-59 

His Characteristics 57> 58 

Way in Which He Responded to His Obligation to Mis- 
sions 59-66 

Penn 150 



2i8 Index 

Peter, Prepared for Missions 44 

Pietists 144, 145, 159 

Plato, Statesman, quoted 54, 78 

Pledge, The Missionary Pledge of the Church Member 26, 27 

Pliny 65 

Plutschan 145 

Pratt, Josiah 163 

Principle, To Regulate the Church's Missionary Effort 30, ff. 

Especially 45, 46 

Illustrated in Paul's Labors 59, 66 

Not Much Attended to in Nicene and Post-Nicene Age, 83, 84 

Nor in Mediaeval Age 93 

Nor in Modern Romish Missions 116, 117 

More Attended to in Protestant Missions 183, 184 

Propaganda, Institutions of Romish 125, 126 

Prophets, Missionary 14 

Providence, Making the Church Missionary 

23, 41, ff., 138, 152, 153 

Psalms, Missionary 13 

Quakers 150 

Ratramnus 91 

Religious Tract Society 166 

Ricci 119 

Rice, John Holt 173 

Overture of 173-176 

Richier 135 

Robertson, Frederick W 35 

Ryland 160 

Samaria, Apostolic Missions in 42, ff. 

Saravia, Adrian 134, 13S 

Saturnin T7 

Schaff, Philip, quoted 78 

Schwartz 145,. 146, i5i» 209 

Scott, Thomas 163 

Scottish Confession I34 

Sechele 200 

Sergius 88 

Smith, George, quoted 103, 106, ff. 

Society, For the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 

Parts 150, 164 



Index 219 

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, 139 
Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, 150 

Societies, Volunteer Missionary 27, 154, flf. 

Spener 144 

Spirit, The Holy, Makes the Church Missionary 21 

Strategy in Mission Work: 

In Apostolic Age 48-50 

In Ante-Nicene Age 74, 75 

In Post-Nicene Age 83, 84 

In Mediaeval Missions 93 

In Modern Romish Missions 116, 117 

In Protestant Missions 140, 141, 147, 148, 157, 158, 183, 184 

Student Volunteer Missionary Union 181, 182, 190 

Taylor, J. Hudson 181 

Territory Overrun by Missions : 

In Apostolic Age 45, 59, 60 

In Ante-Nicene Age 80, 81 

In Post-Nicene Age 86, 87, 89 

In Mediaeval Age 104, 105 

In Modern Romish Missions 127 

In Protestant Missions 192-193 

Tertullian 78, 80 

Theory, of the Christian System: 

In Ante-Nicene Age 73, 74 

In Post-Nicene Age 81, 82 

In Mediaeval Age 91, 92 

In Modern Romish Missions 114, 115 

In Protestant Missions 128-136, 183 

Thomas, John 155 

Thompson, A. C, Foreign Missions 195, 198, 199, 200, 208 

Udney 156 

Urban VIII 126 

Ursinus, Joh. Heinrich 144 

Vasa, Gustavus 133 

Venn, Henry 163 

Versions Made in Interest of Missions: 

In Ante-Nicene Age 75 

In Post-Nicene Age 85 

In Mediaeval Age 94 

In Protestant Missions, 186, 187 



220 Index 

Villegagnon 135 

Warneck 141, 182 

Ward 156, 157, i58 

Wellesly, Marquis of 157 

"Welz, Von 142, 144 

Wesleyan Missionary Society 164 

Wilder 181 

Williams, John 161, 170 

Willibrod 96 

Wilson, John 163 

Winfrid 96 

Workers in Missions: 

In Apostolic Age 21, 22, 44, 45 

In Patristic Age 78, 86, 87 

In Mediaeval Age 95, 96, ff. 

In Modern Romish Missions 123-125 

In Protestant Missions 190, ff. 

Wycliffe 91 

Xavier 119-121, 124,125 

Ziegenbolg 145, I47 

Zinzindorf 146, 147 

Zwemer, Samuel M., quoted 99-100, loi, 102, 103 



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